


Abel or Cain

by Poetry



Series: Dæmorphing [16]
Category: Animorphs - Katherine A. Applegate
Genre: Additional Warnings Apply, Alternate Universe - Daemons, Angst, Book 31: The Conspiracy, Dark, Disturbing Themes, Family, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Moral Ambiguity, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Retelling, Therapy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-09
Updated: 2016-03-06
Packaged: 2018-05-19 06:02:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 25,334
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5956360
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Poetry/pseuds/Poetry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Jake's family falls apart, so does Jake.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Kaddish

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks as always to litluminary for beta reading. Heed the tags, plus additional warnings for panic attacks and non-explicit torture.
> 
> * * *
> 
> Génesis, IV, 8  
> by Jorge Luis Borges (my translation)
> 
> It was in the first desert.  
> Two arms threw a great stone.  
> There was no scream. There was blood.  
> There was, for the first time, death.  
> By now I don’t remember if I was Abel or Cain.

«So Illim and Tidwell want us to help with a plan of theirs.» Tobias was the one to call the meeting, so he had to explain what it was about.

“Why did he meet with just you?” Rachel said, tilting her head back to look up at Tobias in the rafters. Merlyse was up there with him as a gyrfalcon.

«Delia says they trust me,» Tobias said. «Because I was nice to Tidwell when I was in his head, I guess. Anyway. They said there are some Peace Movement hosts who want to be free. I mean, they like their Yeerks okay, but they want to get out. And their Yeerks want to help them. They want to try and all feed at the same time, so their hosts can all break out of the voluntary host area and get out of the Pool. But they would need a distraction for their breakout. And they would need protection. A place to hide.»

“Won’t their Yeerks get in trouble?” Marco said, raising his eyebrows. “That’s awful generous of them, just letting their hosts walk away like that while they take the fall.”

Tobias shrugged. «Illim and Tidwell said their Yeerks are willing to take the consequences.»

“How many of these people are there?” I said.

«Eight,» Tobias said. «Six adults, a couple of kids around our age.»

“They’d have to stay in the Hork-Bajir valley,” Rachel said. “We’d have to get them food somehow.”

“The Chee could take care of that, probably,” Cassie pointed out.

“So this vote isn’t a guarantee we’ll do this, even if we vote yes,” Marco said. “We’d need cooperation from the Guardians of the Galaxy.”

«Freeing hosts,» Tobias said. «That’s what we tried to do the first time we went down to the Yeerk pool. We only got one woman out, right? What even happened to her?»

We traded looks. None of us knew. I didn’t even know her name, only that she had a bug dæmon of some kind. I felt suddenly bad about that. Maybe the Chee could help us find out what became of her.

«We’ve only ever managed to free two people,» Tobias went on. «That woman, and Karen. This is our chance to finally save some Controllers. Just what we’ve wanted to do all along.»

«Yeerk sympathizers,» Ax said coldly. «That is who we would free. What guarantee do we have that they would not flee the valley immediately and betray us and the free Hork-Bajir? How do we know this scheme to help them flee the Pool is not, in itself, a trap? If we arrange a rescue with these voluntary hosts, they and their Yeerks can tell Visser Three exactly when the “Andalite bandits” will next attack the Yeerk pool. Or they could simply not escape and have us risk ourselves needlessly.»

Ax had a point. None of us wanted to go to the Yeerk pool unless it was absolutely necessary. Did we really want to go down there on just a hope?

Marco leaned back against a hay bale and folded his arms, while Dia watched Ax and flicked her tongue toward him. “Ax-man’s got it right. This is a huge risk, and for what? A bunch of hippie tree-hugging Yeerk-lovers being a huge pain in the Hork-Bajir’s asses?”

“For freeing people who can show us all a better way,” Cassie said. “People who’ve managed to make peace with their Yeerks. Like I did.”

“All right, guys,” I said. “Cast your votes.”

«I think my opinion is quite clear,» Ax said.

“Me too,” Marco said.

“Two against,” I said. “Cassie and Tobias for.”

«Yes,» said Tobias. Cassie nodded.

“Two against, two for. Rachel?” She hadn’t said anything so far.

“I say yes,” Rachel said, Abineng watching me steadily. That surprised me. Rachel is pretty cynical most of the time, and definitely doesn’t like voluntary hosts. Or at least, that’s what I’d thought. Cassie looked surprised, too: Quincy’s head snapped toward Abineng, staring. “It’s a risk. But we could at least try.”

Merlyse looked down at Loren. She shook her head. “I don’t trust Illim, much less his friends. We don’t know what they really want.”

“Down to you, Fearless Leader,” Marco said.

I let what everyone had said settle into my head. Cassie is always the one who sees the big picture. She saw the freed hosts as people we could teach us something important, in the long run. Maybe she was right. But there were a lot of risks. The rescue of the hosts could be a trap, like Ax said. If even one of them or their Yeerks betrayed us, it could finish us. Once they were in the valley, they could turn against us, even if they did want to cooperate at first – being forced to live totally apart from other people could drive anyone crazy. David was proof of that.

 _Too much risk, and the reward is too far off,_ Merlyse said. _Maybe later, if the Peace Movement earns our trust._

“I vote against,” I said. “But we could still work with Illim and Tidwell on something less risky, if he has any ideas.”

Cassie’s lips pressed together, and Merlyse saw Quincy look away from me. She was disappointed. Rachel and Tobias gave nothing away. “Come on, Marco,” I said. “Let’s go home.”

  


When I got home, my dad and Tom were screaming at each other. I hadn’t seen anything like it since – well, since Tom was infested. Tom’s Yeerk didn’t want to make trouble with my parents. There was no point.

“I can’t go, Dad!” Tom was yelling in the kitchen. “I have responsibilities at the Sharing, Dad! Stuff that really matters! I can’t just go back on that!” Delareyne stomped her foot and tossed her head. Just like Abineng does when he’s angry, but on a much smaller scale, with Del’s little gazelle body.

“If your bosses have half a heart between them, they’ll let you go. We have to sit shiva, Tom. Do what we have to do as a family.”

“Sit shiva,” Merlyse whispered, a snowshoe hare by my foot. “That means somebody died.”

I burst into the kitchen. “Who are we sitting shiva for? What happened?”

Dad gave Tom a hard look. Tz’irah, his emu dæmon, spread her wing out toward Merlyse. It had been more than a year since we’d done this, but Merlyse went along with our old tradition. She became a husky and tucked herself under Tz’irah’s wing. I sat down by the kitchen table.

“Grandpa G died today,” Dad said. “A heart attack. Quick and quiet. Your mother and grandparents are already headed up to the cabin, and the three of us are going to join them Saturday morning.”

I closed my eyes. Merlyse whimpered and leaned into Tz’irah.

“Not the three of us,” said Tom. “Just you two. It’s sad that Grandpa G died and all, but I’m way busy.”

“All three of us,” Dad repeated.

I looked back and forth between them. Tom would never have argued like this if he were himself. I knew him. The Yeerk had some other reason.

“Uh, Dad?” I said. “How long are we staying?”

“Depends on when we have the funeral. But I’ve called the school to excuse you both for Monday and Tuesday.”

 _Four days_ , Merlyse said. _Out in the middle of the woods. No Kandrona._ She bared a few teeth. _No wonder Tom’s Yeerk’s scared. He’ll starve._

“Sounds nice,” I said. “I miss the lake.” Pizza came a few minutes later. As we opened the boxes, I said, “Can we say the Mourner’s Kaddish?” Tom’s Yeerk might not care about Grandpa G dying, but I did. So did Tom. Maybe it could help him, somehow, hearing us say the words.

“Of course,” said Dad. “ _V’yitgadal v’yitgadash sh’mei raba…_ ”

I didn’t know what all of it meant. But it was what you said when you were mourning someone. And I knew what the last few lines meant: _may God give peace to us and all Israel, amen._ Not likely. But it didn’t hurt to ask.

Tom was awful during dinner. He spent the whole time begging, pleading, reasoning, anything to get Dad to let him stay. Nothing changed his mind.

Unstoppable force, immovable object. Cassie would understand how to make this work. _You should know how to make this work_ , Merlyse whispered silently, but I didn’t. It was like trying to read a book pressed right up against my face. All I could see were a few letters at a time. But Cassie was with her parents at an animal rescue conference or something, so I walked to Marco’s house instead.

Halfway to his house, Marco practically ran into me. Diamanta did this weird snake jump from his shoulder onto Merlyse, thumping onto her back. Dia was heavier than she looked. Merlyse whuffed and pretended to snap at her. Turned out Marco was going to my house to copy my notes anyway. I told him about Grandpa G. When he came with me back to my house, my dad’s car was gone. So were Dad and Tom.

Marco wasn’t surprised. I was. I _shouldn’t_ have been. I was supposed to be able to see ahead, to make the plan. But I couldn’t. I had to let Marco take over. He called up Erek. Had the Chee track down my dad. I tried to charge in, in tiger morph, when we found where Tom took him to be infested. Marco held me back. It felt good, down in a place I wouldn’t admit, to let someone I trusted take over, knowing I couldn’t do it myself.

  


I was not certain Prince Jake’s plan to capture Chapman as a distraction was a good idea. But he was my prince, and it was not my place to tell him his plan was wrong.

I was mostly morphed to human, though I retained a few Andalite features: my nose only half-grown, my lips very thin, my eyes still deep-set – along with a few patches of blue fur in areas covered by my clothing. (I am no _estreen_ , after all.) Marco in gorilla morph stood behind me, posing as my dæmon. It made me feel uneasy, knowing what he was about to do. I knocked on the door of Chapman’s house. He answered, looking impatient, his gladiator dæmon waving her antennae at me from his shoulder.

“Hello, is Melissa here? Hee-yer? I am a friend of Melissa? I have come here to speak to her regarding a class assignment. Class-uh.” I tried not to show in my voice how uncomfortable I felt involving the human called Melissa Chapman in this way. Tobias had told me that she and Rachel had once been friends, and Rachel cared about her. I might have expected an objection to this plan from Rachel, had that truly been the case.

Chapman squinted at me and frowned. “Wait here. I’ll get her.” Behind him, I could see a faint glimmer in the eyes of a statuette, which I was fairly certain was not a normal feature of human decoration. Certainly I could hear the faint hum coming from the mirror frame on the wall. Yeerk technology, stolen and modified from my people.

“Good,” I said. “She is my close friend and also classmate and thus this is a perfectly normal thing for me to do.”

The gladiator dæmon flicked her antennae at me, and Chapman went to find Melissa. I explained to Jake about the hidden motion sensors and Dracon beams.

Melissa stepped out on the porch and closed the door behind her. She wore a lanyard for an insect dæmon around her neck. Good. That would reduce the chances of her getting hurt in this operation. She looked at me, confused. I stepped aside, and let Marco step forward and seize her. A look of pure disgust and terror passed over her face, and she managed to scream before Marco could silence her.

I rolled off of the porch and helped Marco tie up Melissa with rope we’d left beneath it. Her whole body trembled as I fumbled at the knots with my thick human fingers. Then I stuffed a piece of cloth in her mouth – strange, how a human could be silenced by something so trivial as blocking up a single orifice. Once she was secure, Marco dropped her in the bushes and joined the fray. I made sure I was out of Melissa’s sight – she had been through enough without seeing the hideous distortions of a body in morph – and returned to my own form. In the distance, I could hear Dracon beams firing on my friends. I leapt toward the house to join them.

When I did, I saw Prince Jake in rhino morph suffering from a terrible Dracon wound to the head, and Chapman escaping up the stairs. I told him so, though I wondered if he could even hear me.

«Let him go,» Prince Jake said. «We’ll even give him a minute to sound the alarm.»

Right. That had been the point of the exercise – to give the Yeerks something else to worry about.

«He’s coming out the back window,» Marco reported.

«Ax, up the stairs,» Prince Jake said. «Rachel, with me.»

I fairly flew up the stairs, but Chapman was already gone. I could hear him firing a gun in the green space behind his house. I leapt out of the upper window onto the grass. Marco was bleeding terribly from a wound inflicted by Chapman’s primitive human weapon, Chapman himself attempting to escape over his back fence. Both of us ran toward Chapman as he tried to flee. Prince Jake collided with the fence first, knocking the Controller down. He fired at Prince Jake, directly to his throat. He staggered into me, dying, knocking me to the ground. Chapman was getting away.

Prince Jake somehow managed to reorient himself on Chapman, driven by a dark and terrifying rage. «No, Jake!» Rachel yelled. «We need him alive! Ax! Stop him!»

I could not stop a stampeding rhino. Not in this form. But I could get Chapman out of his path. I darted toward him and knocked him out with my tail blade just as Prince Jake collapsed to the ground, overcome by his injuries. Somewhere in the distance, Melissa Chapman had managed to remove the gag from her mouth, and cried aloud for her mother and father. I felt ill, and secretly glad that Loren was watching over Jake’s father with Cassie and Tobias. She would not have been able to bear this.

Somehow, both Jake and Marco managed to demorph and remorph. When I saw they would recover, I ran ahead to the abandoned house. I could hear the human police approaching, and I could not afford to be seen. Rachel, Marco, and Prince Jake came a few minutes later, with Chapman slung unconscious over Marco’s shoulder. Again I helped Marco tie up and blindfold Chapman. I was becoming all too experienced in physically restraining humans.

Rachel had demorphed. Abineng loomed huge in the darkness. “I wonder – ” she began, but Prince Jake cut her off with a shake of his head. He went to the kitchen, Prince Merlyse padding along as a white fox beside him, and came back holding a can. I did not understand its purpose. But he gave me a sharp, steady look, and I knew what it meant.

The time had come for my role in this plan. Prince Jake was about to wake Chapman, so I could torture his Yeerk. And him, too, helpless captive that he was. No less innocent than his daughter Melissa, crying helplessly for parents she had lost long ago. He was warning me. Giving me a moment to prepare myself.

Was I prepared? Of course not. I was a warrior, not a torturer. But a warrior followed orders.

Except when they did not. As my brother Elfangor had not, once, when he had been an _aristh_ like me. Loren had told me and Tobias the story, not long ago.

  


_“He wouldn’t do it,” Loren said. “He wouldn’t flush the Yeerks into space. Even though his prince ordered him to do it. They’re helpless, he said. We don’t do that to prisoners. Alloran called him a sentimental fool. Elfangor always thought that maybe that was how it began. How they lost trust in each other, so that eventually he would lose Prince Alloran to the Sub-Visser.”_

_«So he regretted refusing the order?» I asked her. Still amazed that my brother, the great hero, had defied the Andalite warrior’s most basic principle: never act against your prince’s direct order._

_“No.” Loren shook her head. “Not even for a second. He said… he said the war had done something to Alloran. It had broken the part of him that could see his order was wrong. So Elfangor had to do that for him.”_

  


«No,» I said, taking a step back. I forced out the refusal, quick and hard, like a tail-strike. «No, Prince Jake. I will not torture him.»

Rachel, Marco, and Prince Jake all stared at me. The moonlight through the windows reflected off the whites of their wide eyes. Prince Merlyse opened her mouth in a silent snarl.

« _No?_ » said Marco, as if he had never encountered the concept. «No?»

«No,» I repeated. «I will not be party to this.»

Rachel and Marco looked at Prince Jake, though Abineng kept his focus on me. Prince Jake and Prince Merlyse gazed into each other’s eyes. I wished I could know what passed between them in that moment. Prince Merlyse became a tiger and bared her long, glistening fangs. Then she became a fly and hovered right next to my ear.

She said, “Fine, then. We’ll do it. Let me acquire your DNA.”

«No, Prince Merlyse. I will not lend my face to this either. If you can find it within yourself to do this, find your own way. You will have no help from me.» I turned toward the back door and opened it. I could hear sirens, the shouts of police officers, Melissa’s pathetic cries.

I focused on the northern harrier and began the morph. Never had I been quite so eager to fly away.

  


There are a lot of memories from this war I wish I could erase from my brain. But watching my best friend torture a prisoner has to be one of the top five.

I stayed in that abandoned house with him and Chapman, playing the silent guard. I sure as hell didn’t want to be there, but I also sure as hell wasn’t going to let Jake do this unsupervised.

I had to stop him from going too far. Twice. I don’t want to talk about it.

Finally, Jake gave him a clue how to get out. Crunched some broken glass on his way outside to demorph. I kept watch for a little longer, then I left too.

«Tom,» Jake said suddenly, as we morphed raptor in the morning half-light. «What if he noticed I was gone?»

 _Now he thinks of this?_ Dia thought, but didn’t say. I said, «I told Rachel to get Luis. He had a hologram of you going all night. Tobias has been watching over your house.»

«Okay,» Jake said. «Okay. We’re leaving at noon. I’ll meet you all at Cassie’s barn at nine to set the plans.»

 _Well, that gives us a couple of hours for breakfast and a nap,_ Dia said.

«Marco,» Jake said as he flew away. «Thanks. For staying with me.»

I didn’t say anything back. What was I supposed to say? “You’re welcome”?

When I demorphed in my bedroom, as soon as I was human, my heart started slamming against my ribs like it was trying to get out and start an independent life. Dia’s tail rattled. I scrabbled for the drawer in my night table and fumbled at the pill bottle. Then I realized I was already so tired that if I took a Xanax I’d fall asleep.

 _Okay,_ Dia said. _Remember what Luis said. Starting at the head. Squeeze up your face, then relax it._

I clenched and released my muscles from my head all the way down to my feet, Dia counting off my breaths as I went. By the time I was done, my heartbeat had slowed. I leaned back against the bed and sighed. I’d made it through another panic attack without pills. It felt good.

“So,” said Dia. “What now?”

“We come up with a plan,” I said. “Jake doesn’t get a vote.”

“And what brilliant plan is that?”

Which is how I ended up making a big breakfast for myself and thinking about a way out of this instead of sleeping like I really wanted to. As I ate my eggs on toast, Dia coiled herself tighter on the kitchen table and said, “There’s only two ways this can end. Either Tom dies, or he gets back to the Yeerk pool before the three days are up.”

“Right. Because if Tom’s Yeerk dies, the Yeerks will never stop hunting Tom until he’s dead too.”

“Or until they _think_ he’s dead,” Dia pointed out.

I put my fork down, hard. “Oh no. We are _not_ putting Jake’s parents through what we went through. How can you even _say_ that?”

“But it’s different,” Dia insisted. “The Yeerks will think he’s dead too. We can keep him in the Hork-Bajir valley or the Chee’s doggy basement or something. He’ll be free.”

“The Chee might not even go along with this. We’d need them. The Hork-Bajir, too, probably. This is a full-on Guardians of the Galaxy team effort we’re talking here.”

“We know what the fallback is. It’s worth trying.”

I finished my breakfast, still thinking, and cleaned up. My dad came in, wheeling Mira in her tank behind him. It really was about time for him to install pipes for her, like we had in our old house. “There’s sausage in a pan on the stove. And coffee in the pot,” I said.

“You are the best son ever,” Dad groaned.

“I’m going to the library,” I said. “Two big tests next week.” That was true, but it would take a miracle to pass them both without help from the Chee.

“Good. Your grades’ve been getting better.” And that would be because of the Chee homework help.

I took the bus out to Cassie’s house. I was too tired to morph again. I even managed to nap a little on the bus. When I came into the barn, Cassie took one look at me and said, “I’ll be right back with some tea.”

Tobias came in next. «Is it true?» he said. «Did Jake really…»

“Yeah,” I said hoarsely. “It’s true.”

Ax came in soon after. He didn’t say anything. Dia watched him. She was still surprised at what he’d done. I definitely never thought I’d see the day when Ax said no to an order from his prince. _It has to have something to do with Loren,_ Dia decided. _Having her around has changed him. He’s been breaking his Andalite warrior mold, at least a little bit._

 _And what about us?_ I asked Dia. _What would we have done if Jake asked us to do that?_

 _Do you even need to ask?_ Dia said.

No. No, I didn’t.

Cassie came back with a steaming mug of tea and pressed it into my hands. I drank automatically. It was black tea flavored with cherry and vanilla. “This stuff is way better than coffee,” I said. “Why do I even drink it?”

Cassie shrugged and smiled at me softly. “Why do any adults drink it? It tastes like battery acid.”

Loren came in. “How is he?” she said quietly.

«He escaped,» Tobias said. «I checked.»

Everyone breathed a sigh of relief at that. Except Ax, who can’t really sigh, but he looked like he would have if he could.

Rachel was the last in. “Where’s Jake?”

“Not here,” Cassie said.

Rachel looked at her watch. “9:07.” She and Abineng traded a look. “He’s not coming.”

«He could’ve just missed his bus,» Tobias said. But he didn’t sound like he believed it.

“She’s right,” I said. “He’s not.”

«Very well,» Ax said. «There is a matter I wish to discuss.»

We all turned to stare at Ax. Dia shot Tobias a look. Ax never brought things up in meetings.

«The Andalite military has a protocol for when a prince is unfit to lead. There is a chain of command. The lieutenant, backed by two other warriors, may rule the prince unfit and replace him with the lieutenant until such time that he is fit to command again.»

«Okay,» Tobias said. «Who thinks Jake is unfit to lead?»

All of us raised our hands.

«Me too,» Tobias said.

“So if Jake isn’t in charge,” I said, “then who should be our lieutenant?”

Ax said, «It should be someone who the prince would consider fit to lead, were he in a fit state himself.»

“Someone else who can make the hard calls,” Rachel said. “Come up with the plans.”

No one said anything. Then Dia stage-whispered to me, “They’re all looking at us, stupid.”

“ _Me_?” I said. “Me, the leader? Are you serious?”

«I think I am,» Elhariel said slowly. As if she almost didn’t believe it herself.

Rachel raised her hand, just a little higher than her shoulder. Abineng flicked an ear and shot Dia a look that said, _Sorry._

Cassie and Ax raised their hands. Loren was last, but she did, too, trading an unreadable look with her dæmon.

I glared at Dia, as if this was somehow her fault. Then I declared to the room at large, “You’re all insane. You know that, right? I still have panic attacks, you know. I had one this morning. You sure you want the whacko in charge?”

“We’re all whackos here, Marco,” Rachel said.

“You can make the tough calls,” Cassie said. “The _right_ calls. We’ve seen that.” Quincy gave me a look that was somehow pitying, even on his squashed bat face.

Great. I’d re-enslaved my mother and sent her back to the front lines, where she could die horribly at any moment, and that apparently made me the right man for the job of leading the Animorphs. What the hell did that say about us?

Ax said, «What is the plan, Prince Marco?»

“Whoa!” I shouted. “Uh-uh. No. I’ll be the leader for now, if that’s what you want, but I am drawing the _line._ There is no way I am going to sit here and let you call me Prince Marco, Ax.”

“We’re waiting, Prince Marco,” Rachel chimed in.

Dia hissed, “I hate you all.”

“Okay,” I said. “Fine. I do have a plan. Kind of. But we’re gonna need some help from the Guardians of the Galaxy.”

Everyone looked at me expectantly. Waiting to hear my brilliant idea. I could feel my guts tying themselves in knots. Was this how Jake felt every time he had to come up with a plan that risked all our lives?

 _Probably,_ Dia said. _It really sucks, doesn’t it?_

“We’re going to fake Tom’s death and starve out his Yeerk,” I said.

Abineng snorted and tossed his head. “Awesome.”

“Oh, great,” Dia told him. “ _You_ like my plan. Now I know it’s insane.”

“Jake’s Grandpa G’s cabin is the perfect place to do it,” I said. “It’s in the middle of nowhere. The Yeerks will never know the truth about what happened. As long as we can convince Tom’s family he’s really dead – and with a Chee, we can – the Yeerks will accept it. They’ve basically already written his Yeerk off as dead already, since they haven’t done anything to help him out of this.”

«And then we keep him in the Hork-Bajir valley until his Yeerk starves?» Tobias said.

“Yup,” I said. “Then once he’s free he can stay there or with the Chee, whichever one he wants.”

«He may also stay with me in my scoop, if he would prefer,» Ax said. «A brother to Jake may consider himself a brother to me.»

I stared at Ax. I had never heard him call Jake by just his name before. The name sounded naked in his thought-speak voice without the “Prince” before it.

“That’s very kind of you, Ax,” Loren said. “He can also come visit me, of course, but I don’t think he could stay with me long-term without the neighbors noticing.”

“He should visit you,” Cassie said. “We all saw what happened to David when he was suddenly cut off from the world he knew. We can’t let Tom feel like he’s lost everything.”

That shut everyone up for a minute or two. Then Rachel said, “Problem. If Tom dies – if they think he died – Jake’s parents won’t let him out of their sight. Not for a long time.”

“I thought of that,” I said. “That’s another reason why we need to talk to the Chee. We’ll need Luis or somebody ready to cover Jake whenever he needs to go do Animorphs stuff.”

«And we need to ask the Hork-Bajir if this is okay with them,» Tobias added. «I mean, I’m ninety-nine percent sure they’ll say yes, but we still need to check. And we’ll need to help them out. They have no idea how to keep a human sheltered and fed.»

“We’re turning Jake’s life upside-down,” Cassie said quietly. “Without his permission. Can we really do that?”

“We’ll probably turn his life upside down no matter what we do,” I said. “Tom’s Yeerk will do it all by himself if we let him. He’s always wanted his brother free. That’s why he decided to fight this war in the first place. And that’s why we’re doing this. It’s what he’d want to do, if he could be the leader right now.”

Cassie nodded, and smiled a little. Quincy said, “You’re not a bad leader, Prince Marco.”

“Next person to call me Prince Marco has to be the one to fly all the way to the Hork-Bajir valley and back,” I said.

«On it, Prince Marco,» Tobias said, and zoomed out the barn door.

Dia tilted her head and looked at me with a slitted yellow eye. “Dude. You should have seen that coming.”


	2. Shiva

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Immediately after the funeral, the _shiva_ ("seven") mourning period began. The bereaved family gathered in the house of the deceased and sat on overturned couches or beds and enrobed their heads. [...] The rabbis considered the first three days as the most intense, declaring, "Three days for weeping and seven for lamenting".
> 
> – Encyclopedia Judaica

It was hard, watching everyone in Jake’s family mourn his Grandpa G. But they were about to have an even worse tragedy to deal with, so I made myself watch.

Every family grieves in its own way. Some of what they did was familiar. They drank and reminisced about the old man. Some people went into rooms alone or in pairs to cry. Some of it wasn’t familiar. Steve covered all the mirrors with cloth, for some reason, and everyone sat on cushions on the floor, even though there were enough seats for everyone. Jake’s Grandma Rose’s starfish dæmon had a leg missing, too, which doesn’t happen unless you do it on purpose. When I wondered about all of that out loud, Rachel told me it was a Jewish thing.

Around 10:30, most of the house went to bed. Tom and Jake were in the attic. Tobias kept watch in owl morph while the rest of us waited in the woods with Luis and Lourdes.

«Tom’s going downstairs,» Tobias reported. «Jake’s still asleep. Oh. Oh, crap. He’s going to talk to Steve.»

“It’s happening,” I said tersely. “Are you sure you can do this, Lourdes?”

“My programming is going to make this suck,” she said. “But I’ve skated closer to the line than this before. Actually, I’m pretty sure that stunt Bachu pulled out on the island hurt her worse than this is going to hurt me.”

«Tom says he wants to go out to the dock,» Tobias said.

“Well, that makes this easier,” I muttered. “Okay, folks, we’re going for the lake version of the plan. Everybody in.”

The lake water was _cold_. It was everything I could do not to scream. But pretty quick into the dolphin morph, I didn’t feel the cold anymore. I swam forward to make room for Cassie, who was getting bigger by the minute.

«Good thing it’s dark,» Tobias said. «You people are making an awful lot of ripples. They’re heading out to the dock right now, so try not to let them know you’re here, okay?»

«I don’t think I can morph all the way in here,» Cassie said. «But this should be big enough.»

I fired a blast of echolocation at her. Yup, definitely big enough to break the dock. «Okay, Tobias. Give us the signal.»

«Wait for it… oh, crap, Jake’s awake. I was kinda hoping he wouldn’t have to see this. Wait for it… oh, _shit_ , he’s gonna – Cassie, go, go, go!»

CRRRRRAAAAACCCKKKK! Cassie surged up and broke the dock like a toy. Ax and I found Tom and Delareyne in the water. I rammed him hard enough to knock him out, and I nudged him toward the woods while Ax took charge of Delareyne. Rachel and Loren had Steve and Tz’irah, and moved him in the opposite direction.

«Jake, demorph!» I heard Tobias shout. «You’re in the open! Demorph! We have this under control!»

_Oh, hell,_ Dia thought. _Of course Jake would throw himself in the middle of this._

Finally, the water got too shallow for me to go on. I fired my echolocation and saw a Chee – Luis, probably – come in the water and toss Tom over one shoulder and Delareyne over the other, as easily as if they were stuffed toys. «Hey, Luis. Is he going to be okay?»

“I think his ribs are bruised,” Luis said. “But I got him. He’ll be okay.”

«Rachel! Is Steve safe?»

«Yeah. He’s back on land. And. You know. Freaking out big time.»

«Ax,» I said. «I need you with Luis. Demorph and get ready to knock out Tom if he wakes up.»

«Yes, Prince Marco.» Under the water, his flukes hardened and curved together into a blade.

«Jake! JAKE!» Tobias screamed. «We have Tom! He’s safe! Don’t do anything stupid!»

«What is he doing?» I demanded as I started my own change back to human.

«He was about to go dive in the lake to look for Tom! But I think he got the message. The whole house is awake now. Someone’s calling 911. It’s a total madhouse.»

Pointless, of course. If Tom really were drowning in the lake, the rescue team wouldn’t come in time to save him, not this far from civilization. But if Steve needed medical attention, it was a good thing the cavalry was coming.

The dolphin’s blubber melted away, and I was just a wet kid up in the mountains. My whole body seized up with shivering. I was so cold I couldn’t think. Someone grabbed my arm. “Come here, Marco,” said Lourdes. “Get that morphing suit off, it’s soaked. I have some blankets right here.”

My teeth were chattering too hard to say, _But you’re a girl, I can’t take off my clothes,_ which was probably a good thing, because Dia said a second later, _Lourdes isn’t a girl, she’s a millennia-old robot, just take your damn clothes off._ My hands were almost too frozen to get them off, but I managed, and then there were blissfully thick fleecy blankets all around me. Dia wiped wet hair from my eyes with her tail. I looked up. Lourdes was standing there looking totally unruffled. Freaking robots.

I was still shivering too hard to talk, so Dia poked her head up from the blankets and said, “How’s Ax? Is he with Luis?” If Tom woke up now, Luis could do nothing to stop him.

“I gave him blankets too,” Lourdes said. “But with the layer of fur and all, he’s in better shape. He can knock out Tom if it comes to that.”

“What about Jake?” Dia said. “And Steve?”

“Steve’s even colder than you, right now, and coughing up lake water, but he’s mostly fine. Physically, anyway. Jake’s telling his family what happened. The official version. Tobias told him the real story.” Lourdes hefted some more blankets in her arms. “I should go bring these to Rachel and Loren. Just sit here and warm up, and I’ll bring you some clothes.”

I pulled the blankets over my head. Jake probably wouldn’t want to see me. Maybe that was a good thing. More than anything I just wanted to sleep for about a thousand years. But then I heard Tobias’s voice in my head. «Luis is treating Tom. He has a couple cracked ribs, and he got a little water in his lungs, but Luis says he’ll be okay.»

I wasn’t shivering anymore. I pulled the blankets down from my face. Tobias was in hawk form, perched on a branch above me. “What’s happening at the house?”

«They’ve mostly given up hope,» Tobias said grimly. «Steve keeps saying that maybe he made it out to the woods somehow. They might come through and sweep. But everyone else is sure he drowned.»

In the distance, I heard sirens. “We should get back to that old hunting lodge,” I said. “The Chee can cover us with holograms. Once the cops are gone, the Chee can drive us back.”

«I’ll spread the word.» Tobias opened his wings. «Hey. Good job, man. You did it. You rescued Tom.»

“The Yeerk’s not dead yet,” I said.

«Always the optimist,» Tobias said, and flew off into the night.

  


The ambulance took my dad to the hospital. Nothing too serious, they said, but he could get pneumonia from the water in his lungs. Mom went with him. I stayed at the cabin. After so many years visiting my Grandpa G out here, it felt like home. I wanted to be home, right about then.

My grandparents wouldn’t let me be alone, which was sweet of them, but no matter how close they crowded around me, I felt a million miles away.

“They’re looking in the woods,” my Grandma Rose said. “They have a search team with floodlights.” They wouldn’t find anything.

“This isn’t your fault, son,” my Poppa said. “There’s nothing you could have done.”

Except that I could have. This was my perfect chance to save Tom, to make it look like he died, way out here where the Yeerks would never know what really happened. I should have come up with this plan myself, before I left.

_Marco did this,_ Merlyse said. She was a swan, sitting on the rug between my grandparents’ lizard and starfish dæmons. _You know he did._

I felt hot tears fleck my cheeks. Marco had just had to make maybe the hardest decision of his life, about his own mom, and now he’d had to make the hard call about my family, too. And he’d stayed in the room with me while I…

_Tortured Chapman,_ Merlyse said harshly. _Don’t you dare pretend to me that didn’t happen._

Yeah. Stayed with me while I made one of my worst calls. He shouldn’t have had to do any of that for me. But he did.

“Oh, you poor dear,” Grandma Rose said. “Do you want some hot cocoa?”

“Yeah,” I said hoarsely. Maybe my grandma didn’t understand the real reason why I was sad, but she knew that I was, and she wanted me to feel better. I wasn’t going to turn that down.

Cocoa in hand, I said goodnight to my grandparents. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to sleep, but they seemed to know that. “Wake us up any time you need us, son,” Poppa said.

Up in the attic bedroom, I stared at Tom’s twin bed next to mine, still rumpled. All his clothes were here. We’d have to get him new ones, out in the valley. Merlyse fluttered onto his bed. “Still a little warm,” she said.

Thump. A red-tailed hawk landed outside the attic window. Past him, I could see searchlights flickering through the woods.

“Where’s Tom?” I said.

«We have him in an old hunting lodge in the woods,» Tobias said. «He’s unconscious, but Luis has him all bandaged up. We should get going soon, though. As soon as the police are gone. It’s cold out there.»

“Thank you,” I said. “For everything.”

Merlyse craned her head toward the window. “Is Marco there?”

«He’ll be glad you said that,» Tobias said. «He wasn’t sure if you’d want to see him right away.»

“Of course I want to see him. Tell him to get over here.”

Tobias glided away. A great horned owl landed in his place. I opened the window. Marco came in and demorphed on my bed. I closed the window to keep in the warmth and drank my cocoa until he was human again, Dia coiled around his arm. In the light from the single bare bulb, he looked very tired, his skin tinged gray under the olive brown. I sat down next to him on the bed, because I couldn’t stand the thought of sitting on Tom’s. Merlyse became a snowy owl and perched on the bedpost.

“Hey, Big Jake,” Marco said.

“Marco,” I said. “This had to be your plan.”

“Pretty much.”

“Yeah. Well. Good plan.”

“Thanks. Couldn’t have done it without the Chee. Or the Hork-Bajir. They’re excited to have Tom as their guest.”

“I’m not surprised.” I smiled. Heat rushed to my face. I was crying again. In front of Marco. ( _You’ve seen him cry before,_ Merlyse reminded him. _It’s fine._ ) “Tom’s alive. He’s going to be _free_. He’s going to live with the Hork-Bajir. God, I should have thought of this myself. All this time I’ve been fighting for his freedom, and you’re the one who figured out how to make it happen.”

Marco shrugged. “Yeah. Well.” Dia slithered off his arm and climbed the bedpost where Merlyse was perched.

“I was too close to it,” I said. Still crying. “You were right. I was too close to see things clearly. And… you were right last night, too. With Chapman. I did go too far. You shouldn’t have had to babysit me like that. But I’m glad you did.”

Dia rested her head on Merlyse’s talon. Marco looked at me sideways. “Ax had this idea. From the Andalite military. He calls it the chain of command. When you can’t lead, there’s a lieutenant. Someone who can take over for you. Even when you think you don’t need someone to take over.”

“And that’s you,” I said. I scrubbed the tears from my face with a few hard swipes. “Duh. You’re my best friend, Marco. If you ever again tell me I’m losing it, getting too involved, losing my head – ”

“You’ll kick my butt?” he interrupted with a grin.

Merlyse looked down at Dia and hooted softly. I said, “No. I’ll listen. I’ll listen. Then I’ll kick your butt.”

Dia coiled up around Merlyse’s leg. “Trust me, Merl. I’ll only do it when I really have to. Ax kept calling me _Prince Diamanta_. It was so freaking weird.”

Merlyse hooted again. “You know, I think I’ve almost gotten used to it.”

I took a deep breath. “Marco?”

“What?”

“This whole plan worked because Tom came outside and made himself vulnerable. What would have happened if he hadn’t?”

Marco looked away.

“You had to keep me from blowing it at all costs. You had to preserve the security of the group and keep me alive. Those were your top priorities.”

He nodded.

“So what if you hadn’t been in time? What if Tom had managed to kill my father?”

“It was pretty clear, after I thought about it, that if Tom killed your father you’d lose it.” Marco’s words were cool, distant, but Dia squeezed around Merl’s leg, like some weird kind of hug. It was only then I realized how close our dæmons had gotten, closer than Dia had dared ever since David grabbed her. “Like a chess game: Tom takes your father, you take Tom. You’d have gone after Tom, exposing yourself and us. Game over. So we couldn’t let that happen. Your dad had to survive for you to survive. The one expendable piece was Tom. We couldn’t have faked his death, not inside, not where we couldn’t explain why there was no body. And the Chee wouldn’t cover our tracks, not for a murder. That’s pushing them too far. So, if it came down to that – ”

Merlyse gave a little cry. That cut Marco off. We just didn’t want to know. But there was one more thing I had to know. “Speaking of the body. They’re going to look for one. In the lake.”

“I know,” said Marco. “But it’ll take a while to send a team, especially out here. This whole setup bought the Chee some time to find a body. Erek and Mr. King are on it right now.”

“The Chee are okay with grave robbing?”

Marco spread his hands. “Hey. It doesn’t hurt anybody.”

I half-covered my face with my hands and tried very hard not to think about my parents identifying a body that Erek and Mr. King’s holograms would make them think was Tom’s. I tried to think about Marco instead. Our friendship. We used to talk about which was better, Christmas or Hanukkah. What our dæmons would settle as, when we were older. And now…

“What are we, anymore, Dia?” Merl said quietly, looking down at her long, powerful body. “What’s happened to us?”

She didn’t answer. She just rubbed her head against the soft down of Merl’s leg feathers, then slithered back down the bedpost.

Marco was looking out the window. He turned back to me. “Looks like the cops are winding down for the night. We’d better take Tom to the Hork-Bajir valley.”

I nodded. “I’ll call you before we head back to Santa Barbara. So you know where to find me.”

“Good.” And as the owl feathers spread over Marco’s body, I saw, just for a second, how scared he’d been. For me. I could have died. I hadn’t really thought about that, before Marco said it. But he’d been thinking about it. He was just happy I made it out of this alive.

A minute after I closed the window behind Marco, Poppa knocked on the door. “Jake? There’s a call from your mother. She wants to talk to you.”

I went downstairs and took the phone receiver from Grandma Rose. “Mom? How’s Dad?”

“He’s fine,” Mom said quietly. “His lungs are mostly clear. They have him on warm IV fluids, and they’ll keep him under observation tonight. Listen, Jake. I got a call from the police chief. They didn’t find Tom in the woods.”

“I know, Mom,” I said flatly. “I saw him go under.”

I could hear Mom crying. “They’re going to get a team in to look for the body. They’ll get here on Monday. We’ll stay up here until they find him.”

Merlyse said, _Three days until we get to see Tom. He’ll be free by the time we get to the valley._

“He was so _young_!” my mom burst out suddenly. “God, Jake, he was just so _young._ ”

I went into four-eye, in that moment, and watched myself through Merlyse’s sharp owl eyes. There were bags under my eyes, and my face was splotchy and wet. Merlyse knew who I was crying for. It wasn’t for Tom.

  


We got to the Hork-Bajir valley in the late morning, after a long nine hours in the car back down from the Sierra Nevada. Ax, Loren, Tobias, and I went in Luis’s car, Ax and Tobias in human morph. I slept most of the way, my head leaning against Tobias’s shoulder, waking up during the roadside breaks when Ax and Tobias got out to demorph and get some fresh air. Marco went in Lourdes’s car with Tom, sitting with him in the backseat in gorilla morph, ready to restrain or knock him out if he had to.

Luis and Lourdes parked by one of the trailheads in the national forest. The Chee put on backpacks. Luis hoisted an unconscious Tom over his shoulder like he weighed approximately nothing, and Lourdes did the same with Delareyne.

“Um,” said Tobias. “Are you going to be able to keep up, on foot? Carrying…”

Lourdes raised her eyebrows. “We’ll be fine.” And she and Luis took off into the woods at a speed that would have broken every Olympic record on the books.

“Wow,” Marco said.

“Yeah,” I said. “Wow.”

We got wings and flew to the valley, always keeping the Chee in sight, in case Tom woke up and tried to do something stupid. He did wake up when we were near the edge of the deep slope leading down into the valley, but he wisely decided not to jump off of a superhumanly strong person running like a galloping horse.

While we glided down into the valley, the Chee climbed down the slope like professional rock climbers. The Hork-Bajir gathered around to watch, and I couldn’t blame them. It was a hell of a show.

«Hey, Toby!» said Tobias, picking her out of the crowd. She was with her mother, Ket Halpak. «Tom’s awake. You might want to have some warriors ready to catch him if he tries to make a break for it.»

Toby called for three of her warriors, who gathered around at the foot of the slope where it looked like the Chee were going to come down. But when the Chee got to the bottom and Tom and Delareyne came down from their shoulders, they both sunk to the ground before they could even try to walk away.

I flew to the cover of the trees to demorph. It was safe to morph in the open here, but still, it was gross, and nobody needed to see it. When I came out of the woods, Marco was waving to a Hork-Bajir. One of the ones who saved his mom, probably. He’d talked about being friends with them now. Up ahead, I saw a huge tent, and Toby standing next to it, looking confused and impressed, if I was reading Hork-Bajir expressions. I could understand the feeling.

“Where did the Chee learn to camp?” Marco said.

“You probably pick it up after the first thousand years or so,” I said, tossing my hair over my shoulder.

Toby looked at the tent. She said, “They’ll be looking after him?”

“Yes,” Cassie said, behind me. I looked over my shoulder. Loren, Tobias, and Ax were there too. “Until he can look after himself, I guess.”

“That could take a long time,” Toby said. “I’m not sure how it is for humans. But when we get young Hork-Bajir, who were infested as kids… it’s hard on them. They’re stunted, in a lot of ways. Are they in it for the long haul?”

Abineng blinked. I traded a look with him. We’d forgotten, somehow, that the Hork-Bajir had experience with freeing Controllers and helping them get better afterward. A lot of experience. A hundred questions buzzed around my head. What did she mean, stunted? Did some Controllers just not get better?

_Like Chapman and his wife?_ Abineng said, calling back the memory of Chapman’s Yeerk releasing him, just for a moment, his struggle to form even a few words on his own. I didn’t really want to think too much about it, though. I just wanted to see Tom.

“We’ll talk to them,” Loren said. That surprised me. Abineng looked at her sharply. Loren doesn’t talk much, and she didn’t know Tom, but she did seem to care that the Chee looked after him right.

Toby said, “You’ll probably want to set up something more permanent than a tent.”

“The Chee are in charge of that,” Marco said. “We’re suburban kids. We have no idea how to live in the woods. They know what’s up.”

“You’ll visit him,” Toby said.

“Duh,” I said. “He’s my cousin. I won’t let him live out here all alone. I mean, not alone. There’s you guys. But you know what I mean.”

“Before you go speak to him,” Toby said. “I have some advice, from dealing with Controllers in the past. Offer him a swift death and a water burial if he’ll come out right away. Death by starvation is a difficult and dreaded one for a Yeerk. And they believe their bodies belong in the water after they die. You might be able to free Tom right now if you cut a deal with his Yeerk.”

_I like that idea,_ Abi said. _I haven’t forgotten what starving the Yeerk out was like for Jake. Tom’s been through enough._

“Don’t the dead Yeerks poison your water?” Cassie said.

“I thought they might,” Toby said. “There’s a cave at the southern end of the valley with a little underground lake in it. That’s where we dump them.”

Marco rubbed his hands together. “All right. Let’s make a deal.”

Cassie raised her eyebrows. “Marco,” she said. “Let me talk to the Yeerk.”

“All right,” Marco said. “Cassie makes a deal.” Which was exactly why, I thought, Marco was a pretty good leader after all.

We all ducked into the tent, except Abi didn’t fit, of course, and neither did Ax and Toby. They stayed by the open tent flap. I stood by Tom’s feet and looked down at him. He was lying on a sleeping bag, his ribs bandaged up, his face pale and drawn with pain. Delareyne was curled up next to the sleeping bag in the fetal position. I remembered the last time I saw him like this. My parents and I went to his house for Passover, but he was really sick and couldn’t make it down to Seder, so Jordan and I went up to his room to say _Pesach sameach_ and tell him to get better. Even sick, he smiled and waved at them from the bed and said he couldn’t wait to see us the next time we came over. He didn’t look like that now. He looked like he just wanted to be alone.

The Yeerk looked up at all of us, and an amazed expression crept onto his gray face. “Human. All human. Jake, his best friend, his cousin, his crush, whoever the rest of you are…”

Cassie knelt down next to him. “Under your nose all this time. Think what Visser Three would do to you if he knew.”

“Tom remembers you as such a nice girl,” the Yeerk said mockingly. “And look at you now. Still, you’re right. He’d do much worse than the simple Kandrona starvation you have planned for me.”

“It doesn’t have to be Kandrona starvation,” Cassie said. “We can make it quick, if you let us. One second and it’ll be over. Then a proper water burial.”

“You think you’ve saved him, don’t you?” the Yeerk said. He twisted Tom’s broad face into a cold, distant mask. It looked far too much like Jake’s face when he said he would torture Chapman in Ax’s place. “You haven’t. He can’t be saved. I’ve broken him.”

“I think Tom ought to be the judge of that,” Cassie said evenly.

“Well,” said the Yeerk. “I guess this is only fair. I would have killed his father quickly, after all. And it was well done, I have to say. My superiors will never look for me.” He closed his eyes. A brown slime glistened in Tom’s ear, then expanded. The Yeerk. Cassie caught it as it slithered out of him.

“I call him,” Abi said from the tent flap. He poked his head in. Cassie looked from Tom, to Abi, to me, then passed me the Yeerk. I knew what Abi wanted. We’d been fantasizing about this ever since we saw Marco’s mom do it. I walked over to Abi, who lowered his head. Then I slammed down my hand and impaled the Yeerk on his horn. I tossed the body outside, onto the grass. Let Toby keep Cassie’s promise to the Yeerk, if she wanted. I didn’t care either way.

I heard a low rasp behind me. I turned around. Tom was watching me and Abi. His dark eyes were bright with tears that didn’t fall.

“Tell him not to talk,” Toby whispered. “It’s too soon. He needs time. Someone just touch him. Give him something to connect to.”

I nudged Cassie out of the way and took her place next to Tom’s head. I held his hand. It was limp in mine, like a doll’s. _Remember the last time we tried to rescue him?_ Abi said. _He tried to attack Visser Three with his fists. He fought so hard, even when there was no way he could win._

_Well, he can’t fight now,_ I thought. _Just like us, back then. We couldn’t fight. Not really. We weren’t ready to go this far._

_So we’ll have to fight for him,_ Abi said. _Like he tried to do for us._

Tom opened his mouth again. I pressed a finger to his lips. “Shhh. You don’t need to talk. I’ve got you, Tom. It’s me. It’s Rachel.” Abi whuffed softly behind me. “And Abineng, see? We’re here. We’ve got you. I won’t leave you, Tom.”

Tom closed his mouth. The tears in his eyes overflowed. Delareyne got to her feet, slowly, unsteadily. On wobbly legs, she stumbled over to Abineng and pressed her face against his.

_She’s weak,_ Abi thought. _That’s okay. We’re strong. We always have been. Though not always in the ways that really matter._ “You’re free,” he told her. “I’ll kill any Yeerk who tries to touch you, Del, I swear it. You’ll never be a slave again. You’re free.”


	3. Keriah

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning for lots of mental health issues and ableism.

“He’s not well, Jake,” Luis said. “He was infested three years ago, during a stage of formative brain development. Infestation permanently rewired his brain. There’s extensive neurological damage. To say nothing of his emotional state, which I’m sure you can begin to imagine, since you went through the same. Seeing him in this state may be… difficult.”

“I don’t care,” I said. “I’m seeing him.” I started stripping down to my morphing outfit. “Who’s with him right now?”

“Safiya and Rachel. She’s been out there with Tom ever since he got to the valley. She’s dedicated, your cousin.” Luis’s hologram flicked over from the dignified old doctor with the coyote dæmon to a mirror image of me, while Zefirita became Merlyse in husky shape. Creepy.

“Rachel and I will get back in time for the burial,” I explained as the room expanded around my shrinking body. Merlyse shrank down into a little gray bird, then disappeared. My vocal cords shriveled, so I switched to thought-speak. «My aunt Ellen and uncle George are visiting from out of town. They’re downstairs with my cousins Saddler, Justin, Brooke, and Forrest. That’s the order from oldest to youngest. My uncle Dan is down there too, and Grandma and Poppa and Nana. Grandma’s the one with the starfish dæmon.» I was fully morphed. Luis opened the window for me. I hopped up on the windowsill. «One more thing. Whose body are we burying this afternoon?»

Luis looked at me steadily with my own face. I had a very serious face for a kid my age, I realized. “Are you sure you want to know?”

 _I, for one, don’t,_ Merlyse weighed in. I spread my wings and caught the wind that would take me away.

A trip to the Hork-Bajir valley takes almost the whole two hours of morph. Plenty of time to think. Merlyse and I argued back and forth about how to approach Tom. Act like his kid brother, like nothing much had happened? Like the big bad general who was going to kick Yeerk butt for him? Put on a therapy voice like Luis’s?

Finally, Merlyse said, _It’s pointless. Whatever plan we make for talking to him is going to fall apart as soon as we see him._

She was right, of course. I would just have to do whatever felt right. I circled down to the valley and saw a big yellow-and-white tent set up under the shade of a broad tree. I watched a Hork-Bajir missing a hand crouch down and duck her head and arms through the tent flap, holding a bark “bowl” of wild blueberries. I smiled inside.

I demorphed in the woods, out of sight of the tent. Tak Shipa, a Hork-Bajir warrior I’d met at the dance party the Hork-Bajir threw to celebrate Diamanta’s settling, saw me and watched me morph. “Jake change shape,” Tak said from his perch up on a branch. “Toby change shape. Jake-brother not change shape. Other humans not shape-changers.”

“Morphing isn’t something humans are born with,” I said. I was fully human, now, Merlyse standing beside me as a polar bear. I wasn’t ready to see Tom, not really, but seeing Merlyse so big and powerful made me feel more like I was. “It’s a power an Andalite gave us. An ability.”

“Like Toby teach Hork-Bajir to free our people,” said Tak.

“Kind of,” I said. “I think Toby did a better job.”

“Toby is Seer,” Tak said, as if that explained everything.

“Have you seen my brother?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“How is he?”

“Tom talk much. Feel much. Some new-free Hork-Bajir like Tom. Much, much, much. No rest, no quiet.”

“Does he get along with you guys okay?”

“First, Tom fear Hork-Bajir. Now, Tom like Hork-Bajir.”

“That’s good.”

“Yes.” Tak tilted his head. “Jake wait. Talk to Tak. Not see brother.”

“You’re right,” I said. “I should stop waiting around and go to him.” Merlyse shrank down to a little gray bird on my shoulder so she could fit in the tent. I walked toward the tent. Elgat Kar and Abineng were standing outside it. I told Elgat, “Thanks for bringing food for Tom.”

“Tom is new-free,” Elgat said. “Elgat and friends help new-frees.”

I blinked. I had no idea there was some kind of group in charge of helping Hork-Bajir-Controllers who’d just been freed. But it made a lot of sense to have something like that. _I guess we just never thought the Hork-Bajir could be capable of something like this,_ Merlyse said. _We really need to stop underestimating them_.

“Well,” I said awkwardly. “That’s really cool of you.”

Merl said to Abi, “How’s Tom?”

Abi hesitated. “He’s definitely awake. Plenty of energy. But he’s… not talking a lot of sense.”

“That’s okay,” Merl said firmly. “He doesn’t have to make sense.” I stepped through the tent flap.

Safiya and Rachel were there with Tom. He was lying on a sleeping bag, his back half-propped up with pillows and rolled-up blankets. He was wearing new clothes, a navy blue pullover and black sweatpants. His face was patchy with stubble and washed-out. Elgat’s bowl of blueberries was next to his limp hand, but he didn’t eat them. Delareyne lay between his spread legs. Her head snapped toward me. “Jake! Merl!” she cried.

Tom’s eyes widened. He tried to get up. “Whoa,” said Rachel. “Hey, Tom, take it easy. Jake doesn’t mind if you sit. Right, Jake?”

“You don’t have to get up for me,” I said, kneeling next to him. “I’m just a midget, remember?”

Tom’s eyes were bright. He clapped me on the arm. “Definitely not just a midget. Rachel’s been telling me what you’ve done. You’re General Patton, dude.”

 _Making sense so far,_ Merlyse noticed. _Mostly._

I shrugged. “I’m pretty sure General Patton didn’t have to go to high school.”

Tom leaned back against his pile of pillows and laughed for way too long. “Man. I don’t have to go to high school anymore. I just realized that. I guess I’ll just have to get my GED once you’ve killed all the Yeerks, huh?”

 _Careful,_ Merlyse said. _Careful._ “I’m not going to kill all the Yeerks, Tom. We’re just going to fight until Earth is safe. So we can live our lives again.”

“Jake, we can’t live our _lives_ again. Not when there’s Hork-Bajir and Dracon beams and morphing! We could change _everything_. Get rid of the Yeerks, go to space, have Hork-Bajir TV stars, get all that awesome Andalite technology… you could do it, Jake! You were just a middle school kid, and now you’re a general, and who knows what you could do next?” As he spoke, Tom’s voice got faster and faster, and his face flushed like he had a fever. “I want to help. Toby told me about how she frees Hork-Bajir-Controllers. I want to be part of it. I want to make weapons, patch up the injured, help starve out the Yeerks, whatever I can do.”

“Tom,” Rachel said. “You can’t walk yet.”

“I’m working on it,” Tom said stubbornly.

“How’s that going?” I said, a little desperately. “Are you feeling better?”

“Safiya’s been giving me physical therapy,” Tom said. “I’ve been doing the exercises and everything.” He lifted his arm, and slowly, shakily raised it above his head, so it pointed straight up, then lowered it just as slowly. I had to cover a flinch, watching him. He used to play basketball. He’d had perfect control over his body when he’d played. In my daydreams, I’d always imagined that we’d get to play basketball together again, after the war. But here, now, in reality, it was an accomplishment for him to raise his arm all the way up.

“I can walk fine,” Delareyne offered. She stood up. Merlyse flew down and perched on her back. Del acted like nothing had happened. That was weird. Before Tom’s infestation and the Sharing, we used to play video games together. Del would become a snapping turtle to look like Bowser, and Merl would be a gorilla like Donkey Kong, and they’d wrestle with each other so hard that Tom and I could barely pay attention to the game. Now it was like Merlyse was invisible, irrelevant.

“I’m going to get better,” Tom said. “And then I’m going to be part of this fight. If even one more Yeerk ends up dead because I helped, it’s worth it.”

“We’re going to free more Controllers soon,” I said. “We’ll bring them here, to the valley. You can talk to them. Show them they can make it without a Yeerk. That’ll help a lot.”

Rachel shot me a look. Tom said, “You got it, Jake. I’m gonna be your right hand man.”

Merlyse nipped affectionately at Del’s ear. Still no reaction. Then she flew back to me. I said, “I need to talk to Toby. Hang in there, man. I’ll keep visiting you, I promise.”

“Toby’s awesome,” Tom said. “Go ahead, man.”

I left the tent. As soon as I closed the flap behind me, Abi said, “So you changed your mind, huh? When did that happen?”

“When I saw how prepared the Hork-Bajir are to handle the new-frees,” I said, nodding to Elgat Kar. “Let me guess. He’s tried to walk out of the tent and meet all the Hork-Bajir, hasn’t he?”

“Yes,” said Elgat. “Tom fall. Hurt much. Now Elgat and friends visit Tom. Talk to Tom.”

“I underestimated the Hork-Bajir,” I said. “Even if any of the free Peace Movement people try to betray the Hork-Bajir, they’ll deal with it. As long as they can’t morph, you guys can handle it.”

“Some new-frees afraid,” Elgat said. “Say being free hurt. Better to have Yeerk. Try to run. Elgat and friends help. Help new-frees not fear free so much.”

“Elgat, can you ask Toby to come over here and talk to us?”

“Elgat find Toby.”

Safiya came out of the tent with their fake Newfoundland dæmon. They watched me with serious green eyes.

“Well,” I said. “You’re the nurse. What’s your professional opinion?”

“Tom’s brain has been altered,” Safiya said bluntly. “Profoundly. He was infested during a critical developmental stage.. After all these years, the Yeerk distorted the neurology of his growing brain. His motor pathways are underdeveloped because of the Yeerk’s control. I think the only reason he can still talk clearly is because he tried so hard to fight the Yeerk’s control to say something that he maintained those neural pathways.”

I could feel myself going still and hard like a statue. How many people had the Yeerks damaged like this? God, if I’d known how badly Tom had been hurt by this, maybe I would have gotten him out sooner.

 _And maybe gotten us all killed,_ Merlyse whispered. She became a snow goose next to me and rubbed her long neck against my leg.

“What about his…” I trailed off.

“Crazy talk?” Abineng said.

I shrugged. “Whatever it is.”

“He hasn’t slept more than three hours a day since he got here, and he acts like he slept all night,” Safiya said. “We’re looking at a classic manic episode.”

“What does that mean?”

“Mania,” Safiya said. “If depression is when your mood is down, mania is when you’re up. You have way too much energy, your mood is heightened, and you have trouble controlling your behavior, so you often end up doing things you regret later. People high on cocaine act manic.”

I remembered the way Tom’s face flushed and he talked a mile a minute about all the Yeerks he wanted to kill. It had been kind of like he was on drugs or something. “Delareyne was pretty quiet, though. Weirdly quiet.”

“It’s common for the dæmon to manifest a different episode from the human in a bipolar patient,” Safiya said. “She’s been very quiet and still. Depressive. I think the bipolar disorder is also a result of the Yeerk disrupting Tom’s brain chemistry.”

I suddenly felt like I might fall over. Merl became a polar bear and let me lean against her. “Shit,” I said. “ _Shit_. He’s really not okay, is he? He’s not okay. What can we _do_?”

“Luis and I will do everything we can to treat him,” Safiya said. “Our equipment is limited, of course, but we’ll do what we can. Of course…” Her face tightened. “I’m not saying this is a good idea. But I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention it. If Tom morphed, it would heal the neurological damage. Not his trauma from being a Controller, of course. But everything else.”

“ _No_ ,” I said. It was all I could do not to shout that at the top of my lungs. “No fucking _way_ is he getting the morphing power right now.”

“Why not?” Abineng said, getting up in Merl’s personal space. “Because he wants to fight too much?”

“You and Tom are different,” Merl said, “and you know it.”

Abineng snorted and stepped back. That was when Toby showed up. I breathed a sigh of relief. I didn’t want to even think about what Tom would do with the morphing power right now.

“How’s Tom?” Toby said.

“I think you already know,” I said.

“Terrible,” Abineng said. “That’s what Jake’s trying to say. He’s doing terribly.”

“He’s only been free for two days,” Toby said. “Give him time.”

Merlyse half-wanted to ask Toby if there were some new-frees who never got better. Fortunately, she held back. “I know,” I said. “Or. Now I know, anyway.”

“You’re not the first,” Toby said. “Elgat Kar was seriously unwell for her first few months of freedom. It wasn’t exactly the family reunion her sister Meret had hoped for. But it worked out in the end. You should talk to her about it.”

Suddenly, Elgat’s care for Tom made a lot of sense. “Okay. I will.” I clenched my hand in Merl’s fur. “Toby. I’ve been thinking. There’s some other human-Controllers we could help free. They’re humans in the Peace Movement who want out, and their Yeerks want to help them. But they would need a place to stay where they’d be safe. Would your people host more former human-Controllers in the valley?”

Toby’s reptilian face was hard to read – though I guessed I would have to get better, fast, if I was going to keep visiting Tom here all the time. “I’m not sure that would be a good idea,” she admitted. “But when I brought a conclave together to decide about Tom, my people asked if there were more human new-frees they could help. So, whatever my doubts, I must accept the will of my people.”

For the second time in what felt like just a few minutes, I felt like I might fall over. The free Hork-Bajir’s generosity was overwhelming. Every other species in the galaxy had treated them like crap, and they were still so kind. All I could think was, _Maybe someday, if humans get our act together, we’ll be more like the Hork-Bajir._ “Okay. Okay, cool. There are eight of them, by the way.” I took a deep breath. “Are you sure your people will be okay with them? They are Peace Movement.”

“Oh, they’ll disagree, I’m sure. I’m skeptical, myself, about this Peace Movement. But my people manage to disagree with one another peacefully, for the most part.”

 _What do Hork-Bajir disagree about?_ Merl wondered. _The best kind of bark?_

 _Oh, come on, Merl. Like humans don’t disagree about stupid things._ “Okay. I guess you should talk to the Chee about logistics. They’re the ones who’ll have to bring in food and all that. I guess there’s plenty of space in the valley.”

“Oh yes,” said Toby. “I’ll gather a conclave around the fire tonight.”

“Thank you,” I said. “So much.”

“Thank my people. They’re generous. Me, I’m also self-interested. If we’re ever in trouble again, like we were with Visser One, I expect you and yours to come to our defense. All the more so, now that we’re hosting humans.”

 _An insurance policy,_ Merl said. _Clever of her. Can’t blame her, really._

“We will,” Abineng said.

“Safiya,” I said. “What time is it?”

“Eleven thirty.”

“Crap. We better go back, Rachel. I’ll say goodbye to Tom.” I opened the tent flap. Rachel was doing physical therapy exercises along with Tom. Solidarity, yeah, but it was also something Rachel could do while Abineng’s attention was on a conversation outside.

“Hey, Tom. Rachel and I have got to go. But we’ll come visit you soon, okay?”

“You’re going?” Tom said. “Why? There’s so much I want to talk to you about!”

 _Should I tell him the truth?_ I asked Merl.

_He’s going to have to find out sooner or later._

Okay, then. I took a deep breath. “Tom. Mom and Dad think you’re dead. We had to make it look like you died, or the Yeerks would never stop chasing you. We’re going to your funeral.”

Tom didn’t say anything. But Delareyne said quietly, “They haven’t talked to us in years. I guess we might as well be dead.”

“This isn’t forever, Tom,” Rachel said. “When we win the war, they’ll know you’re alive. We’ll get the family back together again.”

“I know!” Tom shouted, suddenly blazing with anger. “I know, okay? I get it! I have to be dead. I’m not some _kid_. Go, okay? You shouldn’t be late. Just go!”

Rachel and I left. As we flew away, I said, «He doesn’t mean it. You know that, right?»

«I know,» Rachel said. «Tom isn’t the only one who’s screwed up. All of us are. Maybe even you.»

  


The burial was awful. By the time it was over, I wished I’d skipped it and had a Chee do it instead. But a Chee might have flubbed one of the millions of family interactions I had to go through, so I hadn’t had much of a choice.

The ceremony itself was fine. Jews don’t do big long funeral services and eulogies. It’s quick and painless, really. Some of it is even kind of nice. We started with a tradition called _keriah._ My parents and I tore off small parts of our dæmons. Dad plucked a feather from Tz’irah’s wing. Mom tore off Malachet’s tail. They would grow back, but for now, everyone could see they were in mourning. I plucked a feather from Merlyse, even though the gap in her wing would disappear the next time she changed, and watched the feather dissolve to Dust in my hand. After seeing what the Yeerks had done to Tom, I needed to tear _something_ , and it might as well be a part of Merl that would easily come back. After the three of us were done, my aunts and uncles and cousins tore black ribbons around their necks – not as extreme, but the sound of ripping cloth rasped through the air.

So, the ceremony itself was fine. I even understood how everyone felt. I’d lost a lot, too. Seen a lot of death, even if it wasn’t Tom’s. And it felt good to hear people talk about what a good guy Tom was – except when they talked about all his volunteer work for the Sharing, of course. 

No. The worst part about the burial was that all I wanted to do was take my parents aside and say, “Tom’s hurt. He’s hurt so badly. What do I do?”

But I couldn’t turn to my parents for any kind of comfort, even the kind I could still have with all my secrets. If I felt awful, they were destroyed. Mom couldn’t say a sentence longer than a few words without cutting off and crying; her dæmon had to talk for her. Dad kept zoning out. Just totally checking out, not hearing a single word anyone said while he was gone in his head. It was scary how much that reminded me of Marco’s dad at Eva’s funeral. I couldn’t let my dad go down that road. My parents needed me more than I needed them.

When we got back home, my extended family and family friends started cooking for us. We got out the pillows and sat on the floor. The shiva for Tom had begun.

My mom wanted to go through old photos of Tom from the scrapbook and talk about him. I managed to sit through it for ten minutes before I bolted. I hated the reminders of the kid Tom had been before, knowing what he was like now.

Rachel and Marco followed me out of the room, out to the backyard, where Abineng was waiting for Rachel. We were the only ones outside. Merlyse was an Arctic hare, a warm weight in my arms. Rachel said quietly, “What are we going to do about Tom?”

I sighed and clutched Merl a little tighter. “See what Luis can do for him, I guess.”

“We’re keeping him in the valley,” Rachel said. It wasn’t a question.

“Yeah. The Chee won’t be able to stop him if he tries to do something.”

“Tries to do what?” Marco said.

Merl and Abineng traded a look. We didn’t want to explain. But Marco had to know. “He’s in bad shape,” I said. “Physically, because the Yeerk messed up his brain while it was growing. And in his head, too. Safiya says he’s bipolar. He was talking a mile a minute about helping the Hork-Bajir on their raids or something, and he can’t even walk right now.”

Marco winced. “I’m sorry, man.”

“Luis helped you, right?” I said.

Marco nodded. “Yeah. He’s good. I mean, he drives me crazy sometimes – crazier than I already am – but it’s always for a good reason.”

“We have to keep visiting him,” I said. “Even when he’s being difficult. Especially when he’s being difficult.”

“We should make a schedule,” Rachel said. “Mostly you and me, Jake, but Tom should spend time with everyone else too.”

I thought of Rachel’s perfectly color-coded class schedules and said, “Okay. You do it, and I’ll stick to it. Unless something comes up.”

She nodded to me. Then she turned to Marco. “Did Tobias catch you before you left for the burial?” We’d told Tobias that I’d changed my vote on Tidwell’s plan on our way back from the valley.

“Yeah. I still don’t think it’s a good idea. But I’m with you, man.”

Rachel checked her watch. “Half an hour until the meeting.”

“The Chee should be here soon to cover us,” I said. I felt a terrible relief that a Chee was going to take over the job of pretending to mourn Tom. The Chee would probably do a better job with the act than I did.

“We’re ready,” said a voice from nowhere. I jumped and dropped Merl, who turned into a ptarmigan and fluttered to the ground.

Dia reared up and rattled her tail. She hissed, “Don’t _do_ that!”

“It’s a little bit funny,” said a different invisible voice.

Copies of us and our dæmons shimmered into view. Again, creepy. “Go ahead and morph,” said not-Rachel, tossing her hair in a very Rachel kind of way. “We’ve got you covered.”

Rachel shrugged off her cardigan and the torn black ribbon around her neck and passed it to not-Rachel. “Stash my clothes in Jake’s room, will you?”

We stripped down to our morphing suits and gave our clothes to the Chee. I said to my impostor, “Can you tell Bachu to meet us at Cassie’s barn? We need to consult her on something.”

I watched my eyes go glassy as the Chee connected to their network. “She’ll see you soon.”

Everyone was already at Cassie’s barn. Before we got down to business, Rachel told everyone about the Tom visitation schedule and found out when everyone was free – except Ax and Tobias, who didn’t really have schedules, and Bachu, who was too busy doing whatever she did for the Yeerk Peace Movement.

Then Tobias said, «What changed your mind, Jake? About freeing the voluntary hosts?»

I had a feeling he was testing me. He wanted to make sure I didn’t just change my mind because of Tom. “I saw the Hork-Bajir with Tom. They really know what they’re doing. They’re constantly helping out and keeping track of former Controllers they free on their raids. They call them new-frees. And from what they told me, some of them aren’t easy to handle. I think they can deal with a bunch of human new-frees, even if some of them turn out to be a problem.”

“And how are we supposed to help them break out, exactly?” Marco said, folding his arms. “It’ll have to be a pretty major distraction for them not to notice their hosts getting away.”

«Tidwell says he has some ideas about that,» Tobias said. «There are some Taxxon-Controllers in the Peace Movement who work on the big transports that bring food and water and stuff in and out of the Pool. These people are going to sneak out on those transports with help from the Taxxons. So they don’t need to get out by the stairs, the way most Controllers do.»

“That helps,” Rachel said. “So we get in, smash stuff up, the hosts sneak onto the transports, we get out.”

“Great plan, Rachel,” Marco said. “And we get in and out of the Pool _how_ , exactly?”

“There’s only one way in,” Cassie said. “The same way we went in last time.”

I held back a groan. We’d all been morphing Yeerks way too often, as far as I was concerned.

“And how do we get back out?” Marco said. “We almost died flying out of there last time.”

Marco had a point. I didn’t want to put everyone at that much risk. I turned to Bachu. She was wearing her new face, the broad stocky woman with the Chow Chow dæmon. “What about the Chee? Can you go in, distract them in some non-violent way?”

Bachu shook her head. “We can’t risk ourselves that way. Not when there’s no way to defend ourselves if we’re discovered.”

“You’re hackers, though,” Marco said. “I saw you on the Iskoort planet. You worked with a computer completely different from anything you’d seen before.”

«They could hack the computers in the Yeerk Pool from outside,» Ax realized. He aimed a stalk eye at Bachu. «Perhaps.»

Bachu had a distant, considering look on her face. “Not on our own, I don’t think. But with information from an insider… someone high up who knows the architecture of the Yeerk Pool network…”

Marco smiled. “Mom. She could help us.”

“Almost certainly,” Bachu said. “But there’ll be a delay. It was ten days before she could send me her first hail from the Empire Ship. She has to be absolutely certain she’s not being watched to receive or send encrypted messages.”

«Hey,» said Tobias. «I like any plan that means we don’t have to go down there.»

“All right,” I said. “Send Eva and Aftran a message, Bachu. Find out what you need to know. Now let’s go talk to Mr. Tidwell. Go seagull, everyone. We’re meeting Tidwell at a cafe.”

“I don’t have a seagull morph,” Loren said.

“There’s a crow in here with a broken wing,” Cassie said. “That’ll work just as well.”

Loren acquired the crow, though the bird managed to get a hard nip in before the acquiring trance set in. She stared down at her bleeding hand, disturbed, before starting the morph. She wasn’t yet quite used to the idea that wounds didn’t matter anymore, now that she could morph. It had been a long time since I’d looked at any cut or bruise on my body like it mattered.

We flew to the cafe, except for Bachu, of course, who shimmered out of sight and appeared out of an alley near the cafe right on time. It was a nice day, and Mr. Tidwell was sitting at one of the outdoor tables, sipping a coffee, his dæmon’s tank resting beside his chair. He recognized Bachu when she joined him at her table. The rest of us gathered around the outdoor cafe tables and pecked at crumbs. Mmm, cheese danish.

A Chee privacy bubble rose up around us. “Thanks for being on time,” Illim/Tidwell said to Bachu. “I have a lot of papers to grade tonight. Are the Andalites here?”

«Ax, you do the talking,» I said.

«We are here,» Ax said, sticking his beak into a discarded coffee cup.

“What about Noorlin?” Tidwell said. His eyes darted around, landing for a moment on a fly spiraling through the air, a sparrow hopping hopefully toward his table. There’s no paranoia like knowing a morpher might be watching you. After David, I know.

«Yes, I am here,» Tobias said.

“So,” said Tidwell. He stared into his coffee cup, because he didn’t know where else to look. “You changed your minds. Why?”

«As you know,» Tobias said, «we have allies who can shelter these humans who wish to escape. We were concerned that our allies would not be able to safeguard the humans. Now, we feel confident in their abilities.»

Tidwell blinked, and Kalysico let loose a stream of bubbles in her tank. “The Chee won’t be the ones sheltering our people?”

Bachu shook her head. “We would if we could. But truly, we can’t.”

«Our allies are absolutely trustworthy,» Tobias said, a little defensive.

“What kind of conditions can our people expect to live in?” Tidwell said.

«Conditions?» I said.

“Yes. Conditions. Will a person with a health issue be cared for? What kind of quarters will they be living in? Can they bring uninfested children with them? How will their hosts treat them?”

“Health issues are not a problem,” Bachu put in. “My people will not be hosts, but we will visit your people, Tidwell. We have a great deal of medical expertise. And as for quarters, they will be crude at first, but my people will improve them over time.”

«We really should have thought of this before we came here,» Cassie said. And yeah, we should have. But none of us did, so we’d have to come up with answers.

«Definitely no kids,» I said privately to the other Animorphs. «Or any other family members. Tidwell can vouch for these guys. Anyone else, we have no idea what we’re dealing with.»

«And the ones who have families who want to get out? What about them?» said Cassie.

«Adults can understand keeping a secret,» Marco said. «Kids don’t. It’s too much risk.»

«Tobias, tell him no families. Everything else… well, you know what the Hork-Bajir are like.»

«We will only accept these Peace Movement humans you have vouched for,» said Tobias. «They cannot bring anyone else with them. They will be living in a remote rural area. They will not have what you humans consider luxuries, but they will not lack shelter, food, or health-care, and they will be treated kindly by their hosts.»

“Who are these hosts?” Tidwell said. “I’m not comfortable doing this mission unless I know our people will be safe.”

«We can’t tell him about the Hork-Bajir,» Marco said. «What if he gets captured? Then they’ll be in danger all over again.»

«The Yeerks still don’t know where they are,» Cassie said. «And did you hear him? He keeps saying _our people_. He cares about them. Illim and Tidwell are our allies. We’ll never build trust if we don’t share _something_.»

«Tobias,» I said. «Tell him.»

«Our allies are the free Hork-Bajir. You may not be acquainted with Hork-Bajir in their natural state, but they tend to be kind and generous.»

Tidwell choked on his coffee. “I thought the free Hork-Bajir were dead. Visser Three bragged about burning their hiding place to the ground.”

«That is what we wanted the Vissers to believe.»

“I do know Hork-Bajir in their natural state,” Tidwell said. “I’ve met them at the Pool. And you’re right about them. But they also talk about how Andalites treated them terribly.”

Ax said, «We did. And every time I visit the Hork-Bajir, I learn more about how disastrous a mistake that was.»

Huh. Ax’s attitude about the Andalites really was changing. I guess it kind of had to, after everything we’d seen.

“Okay,” Tidwell said, staring into his now-empty coffee cup. “I’m in. When do you want to do this?”

“We can’t set an exact date,” Bachu said. “We need to prepare for the distraction. It will be a major technological disruption to the Yeerk Pool. Enough to send the Pool officials into a panic. Plenty of cover for your people. And we have to construct a permanent shelter for them. But it’ll be about two weeks.”

Tidwell nodded. He seemed a little relieved to have a face to look at while he talked. “The transport will let my people out at an office supply store. Can, uh…” He looked around vaguely. “Can you meet them there? And take them wherever they’re going?”

«An office supply store?» Marco crowed. «Seriously?»

«Hey,» said Rachel. «Evil alien invaders have offices too.»

«We will be there,» said Tobias. «As will the Chee. Until then, we will stay in contact through Bachu.»

“Okay. I’ll get you numbers on how many of our people are still in.” He slung his dæmon’s tank over his shoulder. “I’ve got to go. Papers to grade.”

«Okay,» Tobias said as he left. «So we’re doing this.»

The group started to disperse. But I didn’t go. There was something I had to do.

 _Don’t want to,_ Merlyse said. _But have to._

«Ax,» I said. «Hold on. Can we talk?»

  


We flew out to Ax’s woods and demorphed, because there was no way I was going to do this while we were both seagulls. I stood barefoot on some moss by the stream Ax liked, Merlyse in reindeer shape. Ax watched me with his main eyes and waited for me to say something.

“Ax,” I said. “I should never have asked you to torture Chapman.”

 _Not enough_ , Merlyse said. She brought back the memory of one of the times I went too far, when Marco had to hold me back. When I’d goaded the Yeerk, asking him how he would control his host if I kidnapped Melissa too. I’d threatened Chapman’s family, just like Rachel had done to David. Just like I’d pretty much _asked_ her to do to David. How many people had I twisted into my personal weapons? I felt my face burn with sick shame.

“No,” I said. “Wait. That’s not right. What I mean is, I should never have gone forward with that plan in the first place. I shouldn’t have been giving any orders at all. You were right about the chain of command. Marco should have taken over the moment it was Tom at stake.”

«Yes. That is what should have happened.» Ax shifted his main eyes to the stream and pointed a stalk eye at me instead. «I wish to be clear. I understand war requires terrible things of its soldiers. I acted on your orders even when I would not have done the same, on my own. In the service of winning this war, I will do whatever you ask of me. But the order you gave me was not for the sake of the war. It was selfish and cruel.

«Elfangor once was faced with the same choice, when he was an _aristh_. Loren told me the story. His prince, Alloran-Semitur-Corass – yes, the one from Jara Hamee’s story, who went on to become Visser Three’s host – they had just captured a Yeerk vessel, and Alloran ordered Elfangor to flush the Yeerks in the shipboard pool out into space. Elfangor knew it would do nothing to help win the war. He also knew what he was expected to do. But he refused the order. That is how I found the courage to refuse yours. But perhaps the most important lesson from that story is that we must ultimately learn to refuse ourselves, when we feel compelled to do such terrible things.»

I pictured the scene in my head. Alloran finding the pool of helpless Yeerks onboard the ship, thinking, _Finally, some of the enemy we can get rid of right now. Finally, a win._ And then his skinny cadet, saying, «No.»

 _Why are you picturing yourself as Alloran here?_ Merlyse said, turning her head from me. _That’s sick._

 _Because we’ve been him,_ I thought. _Remember, at that hospital, when we got infested? We saw that pool of helpless Yeerks and just leapt at the chance to boil them alive. We didn’t even stop to think. God, not even Cassie said we shouldn’t._ I said bitterly, “I guess Elfangor was a better person than us, wasn’t he?”

«That is not what I have come to believe, from Loren’s account,» Ax said. «I believe he was not very different from any of us. He was young. He was at war. He ran away from it. He returned.»

“And he died.”

«Not before finding a way to protect his son.»

 _Protection,_ Merlyse said. _Is that what we’re giving Tom?_

 _Yeah,_ I thought. _Just not from himself._


	4. Shomer

The Chee gave me this diary to “process my experiences,” as they said when they handed them out, along with pens, to me and the other refugees. I’ve never really been the journaling type, but it’s not like I have TV or books to kill time with, so I might as well.

So. Here goes. My name is Melissa Chapman. My dæmon is a small cabbage white butterfly named Ververet. And here’s the story of how I ended up living in a yurt in a mountain valley full of aliens.

I wasn’t in the Yeerk pool at my usual time. Garmiray and I had to be at the Pool at exactly the right time for the escape plan to work. So Garmiray told Iniss and Sardrith that she was going to feed early today, and went to the Pool right after school on Wednesday instead of at night.

No. Wait. Ververet is telling me I’m doing this all wrong. First I should write about how I ended up infested in the first place. That’s not exactly a memory I’m thrilled to relive, but maybe this is what the Chee mean by “processing my experiences.”

It all started in June last year, when my parents made me a really nice dinner and told me they were part of an alien invasion and they wanted me to join too.

Yeah. I know. They tried to make it sound like it was this really exciting opportunity. Like family bonding time. All I had to do was let an alien slug into my brain and we would all be in this together. But all I could think was that it all made sense now. Finally I knew why my parents had stopped loving me. They had joined forces with the aliens, and now they didn’t care about me anymore. I didn’t want any part of it and I told them so. They seemed surprised. Like they’d forgotten that I knew how to say no. Then my dad knocked me unconscious with a ray gun, and when I came to, Garmiray was in my head.

She didn’t say anything, those first three days. She was just this silent puppet-master who didn’t respond no matter how much I yelled at her inside my head. But I learned a lot, in those three days. I learned the real reason why my parents didn’t seem to love me anymore. It wasn’t their fault. It was their Yeerks who’d ignored me and made me feel like trash. They’d done everything they could to keep me free, even let the disgusting things in their heads in the first place. But in the end, the Yeerks needed to upgrade our house with new tech, lots of shiny Yeerk defenses and big old holodecks and supercomputers. There was no way I wouldn’t notice. So they infested me anyway, and there wasn’t much my parents could do about it.

Oh, sure, I saw them resist a few times. One time my dad even managed to do it at work. Iniss was _pissed_. But he passed it off as a seizure, got himself referred to a Controller-owned practice, and told everyone he had meds to keep that from happening again. Still, I admire Dad for it. I know exactly how difficult it was to fight back. I told him so, the next time our Yeerks fed. They put us all in a cage together, though my parents usually got to hang out in the voluntary area, they said. None of us would be allowed there unless our Yeerks were sure we were loyal.

My parents told me a lot of things, during those two hours in a cage together, huddled against each other with our dæmons cupped in our hands. I’m not going to write the rest of them down. Some things are too private even for a diary.

Then two Hork-Bajir-Controllers dragged us back to be reinfested. My parents went first, marching to the end of the pier like prisoners to a firing squad. Then it was my turn, the Hork-Bajir-Controller dragging me by one arm while I clutched Ververet’s lanyard case in the other. I’ll never forget what Garmiray said when she was back in my head.

She said, «Melissa. Oh, Melissa. I am so sorry.»

«Sorry?!» I raged. «For what? Controlling my body? Reading all my thoughts? Destroying my family? Breaking the promise to my parents?»

«For all of that,» she said. «But I’m also sorry for how little I can do to fix this.»

«What do you mean? You could fix this by letting me go!»

«I’m sorry, Melissa,» Garmiray said, walking me behind my parents to their car. «That wouldn’t fix anything. You’re still a security risk to Iniss 226, a high-ranking Yeerk. You would be reinfested immediately.»

«I’ll run away!»

«You’ve seen how powerful they are, Melissa. You know they’ll find you.»

I didn’t want to admit it, but she was right. «Fine! Then let me have my body back!»

«Yes. Okay. I can do that. But if you give away that I’m not in control, they’ll replace me, and the next Yeerk almost certainly won’t give you any freedom at all. Do you understand?»

The car pulled away from the rec center back toward our house. «Fine. I won’t do anything. It’s not like punching them would do any good, anyway.»

And just like that, the control was gone. I blinked all on my own. I clenched my fist around my lanyard case. I felt as giddy and free as if I were frolicking through a field of wildflowers.

«I can do this,» Garmiray said. «Let you have control, most of the time. I’ll still need to be in charge when Iniss and Sardrith talk to me. You won’t know the right things to say.»

«Go ahead. It’s not like I can stop you.» It was everything I could do not to roll my eyes.

I felt a burst of something like pain from the Yeerk. I hadn’t realized the connection could go both ways. «I can show you what I feel. If that helps. And I can get you freedom in the voluntary host area, if you behave yourself.»

«I’d rather be in a cage with my parents.» I squeezed the lanyard case, and felt Ververet’s wings beat against the inside of it.

«Maybe. Or maybe not. Listen, Melissa. Not all Yeerks are like Iniss and Sardrith. Some believe that Yeerks don’t have to conquer and enslave. They try to live at peace with their hosts. I always thought those Yeerks were weak and foolish. Until… until I was in your head, and I saw what my people had done to you. Just now, in the Pool, I sought out these peaceful Yeerks. Now I think they have a point. Most of them have no host, but some do, and these Peace Movement hosts, they congregate in the voluntary host area of the Yeerk Pool.»

«Yeah, right. I’ll believe that when I see it.»

«You should see it,» Garmiray said. «I’ll make sure you get the chance.»

There’s a lot more I could say about the Yeerk Peace Movement. How I met the other Peace Movement hosts. How the time I spent with them was my only real lifeline in my fucked-up existence. The conversations Garmiray and I had about what it was like to be a Yeerk, what it was like to be human. How I found a way to forgive her. It’s a long story, and maybe I’ll write more about that later. But I think that’s enough experience-processing to bring me up to writing about today.

It was my last day with Garmiray, and it was harder than I thought it would be to say goodbye. I don’t want to be a Controller, not like some of the other people in the Peace Movement. But Garmiray was a good person, or trying to be, anyway. She’d done a lot to help me, even though she always said it wasn’t enough. And she knew me in a way no one else ever has. No way around it, when she knew all my thoughts and feelings and memories, even my dreams. I could ask for her opinion on anything that was going on in my life without having to explain. I didn’t know if I’d ever have a relationship like that again.

So, on the walk to the Yeerk Pool entrance, I showed her everything I was afraid of. That the escape plan wouldn’t work, that the plan would be betrayed and I and the other people who tried to escape would get killed, that I’d get out and the Yeerks would hunt me down like in that short story “The Most Dangerous Game,” that I’d make it but the Andalites would be just as scary as they’d been when they tied me up and kidnapped my dad, and they’d keep us all in some horrible dungeon.

«I’m not going to say none of those things could happen,» Garmiray said. «But you knew they could happen when you signed up to do this, and you went with it anyway. That’s what bravery is. And Melissa? You’re not just going to have a relationship like this. You’ll have one better than this, without all this power over you, without the terror. With someone who never had to be taught that you’re a person, and a good one, too. You’ll have a relationship with someone who knew that all along.»

Garmiray had to lean on the involuntary functions of my brain, right about then, to keep me from crying. We were walking down those stairs, and I had to have my game face on. As the screams and the stink assaulted my senses, I realized that the fear thrumming through my mind wasn’t all mine. When I went missing, Garmiray might be blamed. They might starve her to death because she’d helped me.

«I knew that could happen when I agreed to help you do this,» Garmiray said.

I wasn’t going to miss that, having all of my thoughts open for Garmiray to comment on. But I wished her well. I didn’t want her to die. «I guess I’m not the only brave one here.»

I walked along the steel pier and knelt at the end. It reminded me of church, for some strange reason, so Ververet sent up a prayer. _Please, God, protect Garmiray._

«I’ll miss you, Melissa,» Garmiray said. «Maybe in another life, we could have been friends.» And she swam out of my ear, hopefully for the last time.

I didn’t have much appetite, but I knew I should probably eat something before my big escape, so I grabbed some fruit salad and sat down with Robin, the leader of my small cell of Peace Movement hosts. I didn’t know if he was one of the ones I’d be escaping with today. We were all secret from each other, so we couldn’t give each other away.

“Hey there, Robin Hood,” I said.

Robin’s wallaby dæmon thumped her tail against the ground. Robin said, “One day, I swear you’ll get tired of that joke.”

“Already am,” I said. “Just got to be a habit.” I looked around the cafeteria and lounge, the upholstered brown seats and the background noise of Family Feud on the TV. I had a lot of good memories here, talking to people like Robin. But I could never forget that the murmur of the TV covered the sound of distant screams. I ate my fruit salad and waited for the signal, even though I didn’t know exactly what it was. I wished I could open up my lanyard and let Ververet walk along my knuckles. But I had to be ready to run with him at any moment.

Someone screamed from the top of a stairway into the Yeerk Pool, “The Gleet BioFilters are offline!”

Which meant there was nothing to stop the Andalite bandits from getting in. Sub-Vissers shouted orders. Hork-Bajir-Controllers and human-Controllers with Dracon beams went flooding up the stairways. Controllers started screaming about seeing insects and mice and what was that current in the Yeerk pool?

_Definitely our cue,_ Ververet said. Robin was on his feet, looking around. I got up too, and walked quickly toward the transport loading docks, taking an indirect path.

The docks were practically abandoned. There were just two Taxxons still on duty, and just like my instructions had said, they were Peace Movement, though they did stink of Taxxon blood – I tried not to think about why. They opened one of the freight cars and pointed me toward an empty crate. I climbed inside and they put a lid over me. I felt a thrill of panic until I pushed on the lid and realized I could open it from the inside. “Thank you,” I said to the Taxxons in Galard, not knowing if they could hear me.

I twisted open my lanyard case. It was too dark inside the crate to see Ververet, but I felt his legs tickle my wrist. He said, “I wonder what the Andalites will be like.”

I didn’t really know. After they kidnapped and tortured my dad and scared me half to death, I wasn’t optimistic. But at least I would get to be alone inside my skin. At least I wouldn’t have to play the footsoldier to my parents’ slavers. I waited. I don’t know how long. The transport shuddered into movement. I didn’t even know where we were going, only that I had to sneak off the transport, and then the Andalites would guide me from there.

The transport stopped. I moved the lid over just a little so Ververet could slip out. “They haven’t opened up yet,” he said.

“I wonder if I can open the door from the inside.” I climbed out of the crate, felt along the door of the freight car for a handle, and pulled. Again, Ververet slipped out through the cracked door.

“All clear,” he said. “Hurry before someone shows up.” I followed him out. We were still underground, but there was a bit more light out here. I spotted a ladder along the concrete wall and started to climb up. Then I heard the creak of metal and footsteps below me. I froze. Then Ververet said, “Relax. It’s Robin and Nessarey.”

“Oh,” I said. “So he’s escaping too.”

Nessarey hopped into Robin’s backpack. He swung her up on his broad shoulders and started up the ladder. “Hurry, Melissa,” he whispered. “More of us are coming. Don’t look back. Just go.”

I made it the rest of the way up and lifted up a trapdoor to find myself in what looked like the inventory room of an office supply store. I followed the soft red glow of the EXIT sign and let Ververet scout ahead again. When I got the all clear, I slipped outside and opened my lanyard case so Ververet could hide himself away.

Then there was a voice inside my head. Just like when Visser Three talks. An Andalite voice. «Melissa. There is a white minivan in this paved area. Embark in this vehicle.»

_Andalites have vans?_ Ververet said, a little hysterically. For a second I looked around for where the voice had come from. But there was no point; the Andalites could be anywhere. I did what the Andalite said. In the van, there was a Chinese woman in the driver’s seat with her Chow Chow dæmon in the front passenger seat. “Welcome, Melissa,” she said. “My name is Wena Shih. My dæmon’s name is Yama. Wait here for the others, and try to relax. You’ll be out of danger very soon.”

“Are you an Andalite in morph?” I said.

“No. But I do what I can to help.”

I was about to ask how many human allies the Andalites had, but then the van door slid open again and Robin got in. He sat next to me, Nessarey in his backpack between his knees. Wena introduced herself again.

“How many more?” I asked Robin.

“Should be three.”

I fidgeted in my seat. “You think anyone’s noticed we’re gone yet? Are they looking for us?”

“I don’t know, hon. I don’t know.”

The van door opened. A kid a year older than me named Miguel came in, his dæmon changing from a bulldog to a cricket as he settled in the backseat. I knew him from school and from big Controller meetings, but Garmiray and his Yeerk didn’t feed on the same cycle, so all I knew about him were vague memories of him being a bully at school. But there was no telling how being a Controller would change you. Wena greeted him by name, too. Miguel didn’t say anything, just held his dæmon up to his ear and listened to her chirp.

Finally, a man and a woman came in, him tall and skinny with a flamingo dæmon, her short and curvy with a rainbow-patterned snake dæmon. I didn’t recognize them at all. The flamingo dæmon ended up having to lie on her side in the trunk, but we all managed to fit. Wena called them Jamal and Julissa. They held hands in the backseat next to Miguel. I wondered how that relationship worked.

“Everyone made it,” Wena said, with quiet pride. “Let’s go.” She started the car.

“Where are we going?” said Robin.

“Into the woods,” said Wena, cryptically.

“What if the Empire follows us?” said Julissa.

“They probably won’t,” said Wena. “You kept them off your trail pretty well. But the Andalites are escorting us, just in case.”

I leaned against the window and looked up. They had to be following us in bird morph, right? But all I saw was cloudy sky.

We went to Los Padres National Forest. I started to get even more confused about where we would end up. When Wena parked, she said, “Are you all up for a hike? ‘No’ is an acceptable answer.”

I nodded. So did everyone else. Julissa said, “I’ll do it, I guess, but I have epilepsy. What happens if I have a seizure out in the woods?”

Wena said, “I was informed in advance. My first aid kit includes a diastat and an oxygen mask, if it comes to that. I or one of the Andalites can carry you the rest of the way. That goes for any of you, at any time. In fact, at the end, you’ll all need help, to get where we’re going.” She held up a canteen, sloshed it around, and slung it over her shoulder. “If any of you need water, just ask.”

We got out of the van and started on a trail. Then Wena guided us off the trail. As we went uphill, everyone except me, Robin, and Wena started to pant and sweat. I thanked Garmiray silently for keeping me in gymnastics lessons even after my infestation, and enjoyed the physical activity, hard and monotonous enough to block out my thoughts.

After what felt like hours – and it may have been – we stopped at the edge of a steep slope. I looked down and gasped. It was a deep, beautiful mountain valley, and the trees were alive with Hork-Bajir swinging through the branches.

“They’re alive!” Robin said. “Visser Three didn’t kill them! They’re alive!”

“I wish we could tell our friends back at the Pool,” Jamal said quietly.

“We’re going to live here?” I said. “With them?”

Wena nodded and pointed to a big hut-looking thing with a pointed roof. “Right there, in the yurt. The Hork-Bajir are excited to meet you.”

I was kind of excited to meet them. Less excited to meet the Andalites, after what they did.

Five Hork-Bajir hauled themselves up over the edge of the slope. “Hello, human friends,” one of them said. “We take you.”

“You’re carrying us down?” Julissa said.

“Yes,” said another Hork-Bajir.

I was nervous. I knew they were free Hork-Bajir, but in my mind, they were still the guards who dragged people down the reinfestation pier. But Robin marched toward them and let himself be picked up, and the rest of us followed, except Jamal’s flamingo dæmon, who just glided down next to him. I kept my eyes screwed shut the whole time and prayed the Hork-Bajir wouldn’t drop me.

“Meret Kar,” the Hork-Bajir offered, when she had me back on sweet, sweet solid ground. I opened up my lanyard case so Ververet could enjoy the fresh mountain air.

“Melissa Chapman,” I said. “Uh, nice to meet you.”

A whole group of Hork-Bajir gathered around us. One of them stepped forward. “Welcome, guests. My name is Toby Hamee. I’m the Seer of this valley. On behalf of my people, I invite you to our hospitality.”

All of us Peace Movement people turned to look at Robin, the cell leader. He shook her hand. “Thank you for having us.” He cleared his throat. “Um. Are the Andalite bandits here?”

The crowd of Hork-Bajir parted. I saw a group of kids in gymnastics outfits, an adult woman (also in a leotard), and an Andalite with a hawk riding on his back.

One of the kids was Rachel. I stared at her, my mouth falling open. Ververet beat his wings inside my lanyard, as if drawn toward Abineng, who looked over the scene like a distant king. Rachel stared back at me, her eyes wide and bright.

Rachel’s cousin Jake was there, too. He waved. “Hi. We’re the Andalite bandits.”

  


I’d been staring at the Staples for so long it felt like the shape of the building was burned into my brain. So I noticed right away when someone stepped out of one of the loading docks at the back of the building. «Look! It’s one of our people!» I shouted. But it took me three seconds that felt like three years to realize that the Peace Movement host we were guiding to safety was Melissa Chapman.

«Oh my God,» Cassie said, a second later. «It’s Melissa.»

I felt so many things all at once I felt like I was going to explode. But the loudest was Abineng saying, _I am going to kill Jake._

_Don’t,_ I said gloomily. I felt the dark shame twist inside me. _Just don’t. We could have told him not to go with that plan. But we hopped right on board._

«Ax,» Jake said stiffly. «Tell her what to do next.»

«Melissa. There is a white minivan in this paved area. Embark in this vehicle.»

A tall, good-looking black guy with a wallaby dæmon came out next – Robin and Nessarey, according to Tidwell. Then there was a tan, handsome guy just a little older than us, though his dæmon was still unsettled. He looked vaguely familiar. Then there was a couple, walking out hand in hand, her snake dæmon wrapped around his flamingo dæmon’s neck like a jeweled necklace. Ax directed them all toward the van. Then we followed Bachu on the road to the national forest.

We should have been celebrating pulling this off. We were getting five more people out from Yeerk control. But the mood as we flew up to the valley was quiet and tense. We all knew we were guilty, to one degree or another, and very soon we would all have to face what we’d done.

They made it to the national forest without being followed, as far as we could tell. We followed them all the way to the edge of the valley, and once they were safely in Hork-Bajir hands, we flew down to the cover of the trees to demorph.

“Jake,” Cassie said, when we were all demorphed. “What are we going to say to Melissa?”

“Nothing,” Jake said. “Not in front of everyone. Later.”

We all looked sideways at each other.

“Wow,” said Diamanta. “Doesn’t it make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside when we get to free Controllers? We should do this more often!”

Abineng laughed, and Merlyse and Quincy did too, a little nervously. Then we walked out to meet the people we’d helped rescue.

The Hork-Bajir were already gathered around their new human guests. They made way for us, though. And then there they were: Robin, Miguel, Julissa, Jamal, and Melissa, staring at me in total shock. It hit me hard. It made me remember curling up with her as Fluffer while she cried and cried because her parents didn’t love her anymore. That night Abineng and I promised to each other that we would fight this war to protect kids like her who’d had their families taken from them by the Yeerks.

_We didn’t protect her,_ Abineng said. _We didn’t even know she was a Controller. We helped Jake tie her up and torture her dad. Hell, I totally forgot about that promise until just now._

_Maybe that was our reason to fight back then,_ I thought, _but we forgot about that pretty quickly, didn’t we?_

And then Jake, like a dork, went on ahead of me and said, “Hi. We’re the Andalite bandits.”

“You?” said Miguel, staring.

Julissa clapped her hand to her mouth. She laughed a little. “Oh, Lord, Jamal. You and your conspiracy theorists were right. They really are human.”

And Melissa? Her face twisted from shock to betrayal. Tears spilled out of her eyes, and she looked away from me.

I looked at Jake. His face was drawn and serious. He talked to the group, but Merlyse, elk-shaped, kept her eyes on Melissa. “The Hork-Bajir are your hosts and protectors here. We’ll all be here, too, sometimes. And you’ll get health care, food, and other stuff from the Chee. Bachu?”

Bachu stepped forward. Lourdes and Safiya joined her. They introduced themselves to the new-frees, both their human names and their Chee names. “We’re the Chee,” Bachu explained. “There are more of us. We appear to you in this form because it is familiar. But this is what we look like.” And the three of them turned off their holograms.

The new-frees gasped. Jamal’s dæmon hid behind him. The Hork-Bajir were all rapt. None of them had seen a Chee turn off its hologram before.

The Chee turned their holograms back on. Jake said, “The Chee built you all a yurt. It’s this big hut thing people build in Mongolia to live in. Just latrines and campfires for now, but they’re working on an outhouse and a kitchen. Sorry about that. There’s someone already living in the yurt. My brother, Tom. We freed him a couple weeks ago.”

Robin stared at Jake. “The Empire thinks he’s dead. How did you do that?”

Jake pressed his lips together and looked away. “Long story.”

“Why don’t we show you where you’re going to live?” Bachu said.

Robin folded his arms and looked at Jake. “Why are these robots helping you?”

“Why do you help the Peace Movement?” Safiya countered. “We all have our own reasons for doing what we do, just like each of you.”

“You can trust them,” Loren said.

Melissa snorted. “I don’t even trust you.” She turned to Toby. “What about you? Do the Hork-Bajir trust them?”

“The one who calls herself Wena Shih is the spymaster of the Yeerk Peace Movement,” said Toby. “If you are loyal to the Peace Movement, then you are already loyal to her.”

Julissa and Jamal traded a look. Julissa said in a small voice, “I think I’ve learned a little too much for one day.”

“All right,” Robin said. “Show us the way.”

The new-frees followed the Chee. I took a step toward Melissa. “Wait. Melissa. Can we talk?”

She pressed her lips together. Her face flushed. “Fine.”

Tobias flew to perch on Abineng’s neck and said, «Do you want me to come with you?»

“Yes,” Abineng said. “Please.”

Tobias, Melissa, and I went back past the tree line. I could feel the other Animorphs watching us. Once we were out of sight, Melissa folded her arms and waited for me to say something.

“You heard Jake say that we freed Tom two weeks ago,” I said. “That… was a bad time. My aunt and uncle were going to take Jake and Tom way out of town for four days. Tom’s Yeerk was losing it. He got your dad’s Yeerk to help him try and assassinate Uncle Steve. It was hell on Jake. He was constantly looking over his shoulder for another attempt on Steve’s life. The only thing he could think of to keep Yeerk attention away from Tom – and I’m not saying this is right – but the only thing he could think of was to put the screws on your dad. He’s a high-ranking Yeerk, so the Empire focused on looking out for him instead of Tom. And it worked, I guess. The Yeerks stopped helping to bail out Tom. And we were able to get him out. But I’m sorry, Melissa. I’m really sorry. If I could do it all over again – fuck, there’s so many things we should have done differently.”

Melissa’s eyes were rimmed with red. She’d let Ververet out of his case. He sat on her neck, his wings quivering. She didn’t have a party when he settled. I’d asked her if she would, and she’d said she didn’t want to make a big deal of it. She hugged herself and said, “So there’s no other way you could have distracted the Empire from going after your uncle? Is that what you’re saying?”

I looked sideways at Abi and Tobias. They looked back. There was no hiding, no compromises. I said, “No. There probably was another way. But Jake was so messed up he couldn’t see it.”

“And you didn’t tell him,” Melissa said. “You didn’t say he should have found another way.”

I didn’t even bother looking at Abineng. He said, _No, you didn’t. When he told us the plan, you said, ‘Cool.’_ I closed my eyes, and felt myself burn with the truth of it.

Melissa said, “I know you’re the same girl who protected your sisters when your parents went through that awful divorce. I know it, but I can’t really believe it.” I opened my eyes, and saw she was staring at Tobias. “Who’s the hawk?”

«My name is Tobias,» he said. «And, yeah, I’m part of this too.»

“Demorph,” Melissa said. “Be human, or Andalite, or whatever you are.”

«This is what I am,» Tobias said. «But I can morph human, if that’s what you want.» He glided to the ground and started the morph.

“You might want to look away,” I said. “Morphing is really gross.”

Melissa watched, at first. But when his beak squished and ran together into a human mouth, she shrieked and covered her eyes. Ververet flew in wild circles around her before settling again.

“You can look now,” Tobias said, when it was over. Melissa uncovered her face. She looked from Tobias to Elhariel to Abineng. I felt heat crawl up my face. Yeah, Tobias had been perching on Abineng. And now she was looking at him, and how he’d touched Abineng while in morph, and maybe drawing some kind of not entirely wrong conclusion.

“You look familiar,” Melissa said, squinting at him.

“Storm-petrel dæmon,” Ververet said to her. “Wasn’t he in our grade?”

“I was,” Tobias said. “Until I got stuck in hawk morph.”

“You can get stuck?”

“Yeah,” he said. “Morphing is dangerous.”

Melissa hunched in on herself a little more. “Dad was hurt. When he came home. His Yeerk said he was tortured for information by Andalites. Which of you did it?”

I edged over to Abineng and put a hand on his neck. Tobias sat cross-legged on the ground between Melissa and me. I said, “The attack on your house, the kidnapping, that was me, Ax – that’s the Andalite – Jake, and Marco. The torture was Jake.”

“Your cousin Jake,” Melissa said, sounding numb. “The leader of the Andalite bandits. He did that.”

“We call ourselves Animorphs,” I said. “But yeah. He did that.”

“And none of you stopped him,” Melissa repeated.

I looked down at Tobias, then back up at Melissa. There was nothing I could say.

“You’re messed up,” Melissa said. “This war? It’s messed you up. I’m grateful that you’re helping to protect us. I am. But I wish the people fighting the Yeerk Empire on Earth were better people than you.”

I wanted to ask Melissa how she became a Controller. I wanted to tell her that I was the one to send her the anonymous note that said her parents still loved her. I wanted to tell her that better people than us probably would have been killed by this war months ago. But I could tell she wasn’t in the mood to listen. So I just stood there and watched her walk away.

Tobias held a hand up to me. I took it and sat in the leaf litter next to him. Elhariel flew up and perched on Abi’s head. “She’s right about us,” I said. “We’re messed up.”

“Maybe that’s why we need these people living in the valley,” Tobias said, tangling his fingers in mine. “People who aren’t fighting this war, people who haven’t been messed up by it. We need some perspective.”

“You think she’ll forgive us?” I said.

“It’s her dad. Of course she won’t forgive us. I wouldn’t, if someone did that to Loren. But it’s really hard to be the one to say no, especially to Jake.” He looked right into my eyes and squeezed my hand. “So I’ll forgive you for not saying no, if you’ll forgive me.”

“I do, Tobias. Of course I do.”


	5. Nichum Avelim

**I. Ax with Loren and Tobias**

  


_This section is set between chapters 3 and 4._

  


“Ax,” Loren said, passing me more of the delicious hot chocolate, “what happened between you and Jake?”

I drank hot chocolate. I said stiffly, “What do you mean?”

“He asked you to stay behind after out meeting with Tidwell,” Tobias said. “And I saw a peregrine falcon fly out of my territory about an hour later.”

It was pointless to avoid it further. “He wished to discuss Chapman’s kidnapping. Nap-p-ping. Dissss-cusssss.”

“What happened that night?” Loren said, leaning forward in her seat. “Marco looked shaken at our meeting the next morning.”

I saw Tobias’s mouth turn downward, and Elhariel shift nervously from foot to foot. He had been showing more emotion on his human face, lately, and Elhariel in her body, too, though as far as I knew he was morphing human no more often than before. As I studied him, I got a feeling that he already knew the answer to Loren’s question.

I switched to thought-speech, because I did not want to repeat words or stumble, not for this. «Kidnapping was not all we did. Prince Jake wanted the kidnapping to appear plausible. For there to be a reason why the Andalite bandits had taken him away. He ordered me to torture Chapman for information.»

Loren went very still. “What did you do?”

«I refused him. I told him I would not.»

“You said no to Jake.” Tobias stared at me.

“I remembered what you told us, Loren. About Elfangor. What Alloran ordered him to do. To-do, to-do. I remembered what happened in the other world, where Elfangor helped you speak out against the genocide of your species. And I thought – Elfangor would have said no.”

“That was very brave of you, Ax,” Loren said.

“I understand. Derrrrr. Stand. Prince Jake is not a trained soldier. And his family was at risk. Risk-uh. He could not think clearly. He was angry. After I left, he tortured Chapman instead.”

A heavy silence fell. I drank hot chocolate. Prince Jake had no one to speak to about this, like I did. Perhaps Marco. All the same, I was grateful Tobias and Loren would listen.

Tobias said, “We can’t do that. If one of us gets captured or killed or whatever – we can’t fall apart like Jake did. I wouldn’t want either of you to end up like that, if it happened to me.” Elhariel was perched on his folded hands, and he held her under his chin as he said, “Promise. Promise you won’t just go on some awful revenging rampage.”

“If you’ll promise the same for me,” Loren said.

“Andalites take solemn vows with blades at our own throats,” I said. “Thrrrrroatsuh.”

“I’d make a serious promise on a Bible,” Loren said.

Tobias curled his little finger and held it out. “Pinky swear?”

Loren laughed and did the same with hers. They hooked their little fingers together and shook. “Pinky swear.”

I mimicked the pose with my finger and did the same.

  


**II. Marco with Luis**

  


“How does it feel,” Luis said, “to be more open with your friends about your panic attacks?”

“Okay, I guess,” I said. “Cassie still pities me too much. But she’s always been like that. And hey, everyone voted me leader even though they all know how screwed up I am. So that’s something.”

“So it wasn’t as bad as you thought it would be.”

I shrugged. “I guess not.”

“Tell me about your panic attacks. Have you had any since the last time we had a session?”

I blew out a breath. “Yeah. I mean, there was the thing with Tom. Obviously. Jake… had a bad time.” It didn’t feel right to tell a total pacifist all about that night. “I had to stop him from doing some really scary things. And sometimes I couldn’t stop him at all. After I spent the night reining him in, I had a panic attack. I couldn’t take a Xanax because I was wiped and I needed to stay awake. So I did that progressive muscle relaxation thing you taught me, and the breathing exercises, and I got through it without the pills. So that was good.”

“Absolutely,” Luis said. “Good job.”

“And you were there for the one I had when I saw Tom the way he was. The most recent one was last week. This one’s, uh…” I squeezed and unsqueezed my hand around Dia’s neck. “Kinda stupid.”

“A panic attack doesn’t have to be related to a serious wartime event to be valid,” Luis said. “There are many people with relatively mundane lives who have panic attacks.”

“Yeah. Okay, I guess you’re right. It still does feel really small compared to the usual. Dad made a nice dinner and told me he wanted to Talk. Like, with a capital T. He’s been dating my freaking math teacher, I knew that, but he told me it’s getting serious. He talked about how great she is. And he said… he said she reminded him of Mom. The way she knew just the right thing to say to calm him down or resolve a fight. And I sat there eating my chicken and thinking, Mom wasn’t really all that great at calming him down, and sometimes she could drag out a fight for days. But during the last year of their marriage, she did get better at those things. When she was Visser One. I went kind of crazy. I ran to my bedroom and took a Xanax and Dad kept knocking on the door but it was half an hour before I could talk to him again.”

“Marco,” Luis said. “That’s not stupid. You’re worried that your father loved Visser One more than he loved your mother.”

I nodded and rubbed my face against Dia’s scales.

“And you hoped that maybe if your parents reunited, your mother would change her mind about wanting to end her relationship with your father.”

I didn’t say anything. But Dia hissed softly, “We did. But now we can’t hope that anymore.”

“I understand,” Luis said. “Have you seen the two of them together yet? Your father and his girlfriend?”

“Not for more than a few minutes at a time.”

“Well, you’ll have to prepare yourself for seeing them together. It might trigger another panic attack. Do you want to talk about ways to handle it?”

“Yeah. Yeah. Definitely don’t want to have a mental breakdown in front of my freaking math teacher.”

  


**III. Cassie with Bachu**

  


Rachel and Jake were with Tom. The other Animorphs had already left. But I leaned back against a tree, facing the yurt with the Peace Movement refugees inside, watching the Chee come in and out with supplies.

“You did an amazing job, Bachu,” I said. “I mean, we helped a little, but you really made this happen.”

“The Peace Movement, too,” Bachu said. She stood near me, her Chow Chow dæmon facing the yurt, too, his tail thumping rhythmically against the ground. “Illim and Tidwell have built up an impressive network.”

“I hope their Yeerks are okay,” I said. “They’re the ones who’ll suffer for this. When will we know?”

“I’ll check in with my spies tomorrow,” Bachu said.

Quincy was in my left hand. I rubbed along his back with my right thumb. “I wish Aftran were here to see this. She’d be so proud.”

“She knows what we’re doing,” Bachu said. “She and Eva got us the intel we needed to hack the Gleet BioFilters.”

“Still. She didn’t know for sure they’d pull it off. She’d love to see this. Peace Movement Yeerks helping to set their hosts free. Just like she did with Karen.”

Bachu looked at me sideways. The sun was starting to set, and part of her face was in shadow. “It must be lonely. Being the only Animorph who really cares about a Yeerk.”

I replied, “Isn’t it lonely being the only Chee who really cares about a Yeerk?”

“It is,” Bachu admitted. “None of them really understand what I got out of that partnership.”

“Seeing the world through Aftran-colored glasses,” I said. Or Aftran-pitched echoes, in Quincy’s case. “It’s a good view. Everything seems a little fuzzy without her, you know? Like when I’ve just demorphed from osprey, and everything seems so close up and vague.”

“What are we going to do when she comes back?” Bachu said.

“Work out some kind of timeshare, I guess? I’m sure Rachel has a color-coded schedule for that.”

“If you can convince her to make one? I’ll put it in my memory banks.”

  


  


**IV. Jake and Tom with Luis**

  


Two days after the human new-frees moved into the valley, I came back at night for some family therapy with Tom and Luis.

As I flew into the valley, my owl eyes saw right away that Tom’s tent was set back up, even though he’d moved into the yurt five days ago. I demorphed and let myself into the tent.

Tom and Luis were inside. “Hey, Jake,” Tom said, going right in for the hug. Merlyse became a wolverine and rubbed her cheek against Delareyne’s.

“Tom,” I said. “Why are you back in the tent?”

Tom’s smile curdled into a snarl. “Those people are _friends_ with the Yeerks, Jake! They all have Stockholm syndrome or something! I tried to make them see reason, but they wouldn’t listen. Maybe I should be a role model to them, like you said, but I just can’t handle living with people like that. It makes my skin crawl.”

 _Shit,_ Merlyse said, backing away from Del a little. _We should have seen this coming._

“You don’t have to live with them if you don’t want to,” I said, keeping my voice calm. “But you shouldn’t give up on trying to talk to them, okay? I want you to have friends out here, Tom.”

“I’m not making any friends until they stop talking about Yeerks like they’re old buddies.”

“Okay, Tom. Fine. Make friends with Hork-Bajir, then. They definitely don’t like Yeerks.”

“I never heard anyone in the cages talking bullshit like that,” Tom muttered. “Like they missed their Yeerks or something… they’re like those traitors, the voluntary hosts.” His head snapped up, and Del stared at Merl, her ears laid back flat against her skull. “Wait. Are these voluntary hosts? Did you free voluntary hosts _on purpose_?”

Merl and I traded a look. I wasn’t going to lie to Tom. There would be no point. “Yes. But it’s not what you think, Tom. It’s – ”

“There are people who’ve been enslaved for years – _kids –_ and it’s the _voluntary_ Controllers you bring out here?” Tom’s eyes were wild. “I thought you were like the Hork-Bajir! Freeing Controllers, giving them their lives back! But you’re making deals with traitors!”

Luis cut in. “Maybe the two of you need a break from each other. Take some time to think about this conversation. We’ll meet again some other time. Jake, come with me.”

Tom just sat there, stiff with shock and betrayal, as I left the tent with Luis. We walked toward the stream. “Listen, Jake. I don’t know what it’s like to be a Controller, but from what he’s said in his therapy sessions, Tom was subjected to the equivalent of extreme mental, emotional, and physical abuse for three years. He needs treatment. I feel confident in my diagnosis of bipolar I, and I’m going to start him on lithium very soon. He’s agreed that it’s a good idea. Once he’s come down from this manic episode, you’ll be able to have more constructive conversations with him.”

In a burst of violence, Merlyse turned into a polar bear, walked up to a large rock by the stream, and knocked it in with a huge splash. The water roared and reshaped itself around the new obstacle. “It’s not FAIR!” she screamed.

Zefirita, Luis’s coyote dæmon, walked up to her and pricked up her ears, showing she was ready to listen.

“Marco got his mom back,” Merlyse said. “She went through _hell_. She was a slave for just as long as Tom. But she was just as strong as she ever was. Stronger. He got his mom back just like she was before. And Delareyne looked like she was going to _hurt_ me.”

Zefirita looked up at Merl and said, “Think of all the growing people do from when they’re fourteen to when they’re seventeen. Think of all the growing you’ve done. Tom didn’t get to have that. The Yeerks took a kid, isolated him, abused him, and stunted his growth. Literally. You can’t compare him to a grown woman.”

I dragged a hand slowly down my face. “Yeah. Okay. I get it. It’s different. But it still isn’t fair.”

“It isn’t fair for him either,” Luis pointed out. “You get to see your brother several times a week, now. His mother is out there somewhere, deep behind enemy lines. He might be just as jealous of you.”

“So you’re saying that life sucks for both of us, so we should stick together?”

Zefirita batted at Merl with her paw. She sighed and turned into an Arctic wolf, padding back toward me with her anger drained away.

“I know Tom wasn’t the comfort to you that you hoped he’d be,” Luis said. “But you’ve always had someone to support you that way. You still do.”

  


**V. Rachel with Tobias**

  


By unspoken agreement, Tobias and I flew right to his meadow after we left the Hork-Bajir valley. I demorphed and sat on a rock in the sunshine, and he morphed Yoort. Feeling him burrow into my brain through my ear barely even grossed me out anymore.

I had the memory ready to go. I sank into it with him. I was Fluffer McKitty, curled in Melissa’s arms as she cried and cried and wondered what she’d done to make her parents not love her anymore. Ververet was a swallowtail butterfly on her face, his antennae wet with her tears. I wondered how many children were just like Melissa, their families stolen from them by the Yeerks. And Abineng and I swore to each other that we would do anything in our power to help kids like her.

«How long did it take me to forget that promise?» I asked Tobias. «A week, maybe?»

«Rachel,» Tobias said. «You can’t save every kid like Melissa. None of us can. You’re not being fair to yourself.»

«You’re right. I can’t. But I could at least care about saving them. And I stopped caring, Tobias. You know why I fight this war. You know better than anybody.»

«Maybe the reasons why you fight aren’t as important as fighting for the right thing.»

«You don’t believe that, Tobias. I know you don’t.» Abineng snorted and tossed his head. «Whenever I think about the Yeerks breaking their promise to the Chapmans, taking Melissa, it makes me so angry I could choke. I could have checked on her, Tobias. If I – it’s just – she was one of my closest friends, and I just stopped giving a shit!»

«Well, you give a shit now,» he pointed out.

«All of those people. Tom…» I showed Tobias what Tom was like, his sudden rages, his impossible dreams of helping the Hork-Bajir on their raids, his fits of despair at his own helplessness. I felt Tobias recoil in horror and sadness. «Melissa, the others. They need more than just a place to live, more than just freedom. They need someone who’ll look out for them. Who’ll stand up for them. Who’s going to do that, Tobias?»

«Why not you?» Tobias said. «You care about them. I’m in a good position to know.»

«I cared about Melissa, or I thought I did, and look what happened.»

«All you can do is try to do better,» said Tobias. «That’s all any of us can do. Besides, this time is different from back then. This time, I know what you want to do, and I’m going to help you.»

He crawled out of my ear and demorphed. Then he morphed again, to human. I watched him the whole time. I didn’t want to look away and pretend the change from Tobias the Yoort to Tobias the boy was some kind of magic trick. It was messy, and gross, and tiring, and Tobias chose to do it anyway. For me.

“There’s something you should know, too,” Tobias said. “I recognized someone else from the new-frees. The other kid, Miguel.”

“I thought he looked a little familiar. Who is he?”

Tobias looked up from Elhariel, who was perched on his fist and watching Abineng with bright fixed eyes, to me. His face was stony – not blank, like he’d forgotten how to have a face, but purposefully serious. ( _He and Elhariel remember how to show what they feel with their bodies,_ Abi said. _I’m pretty sure he learned that from you._ ) Tobias said, “He’s one of the bullies who used to hurt me. Before Jake chased them off.”

He’d told me about that. There was a group of three boys who would beat him up, spit in his lunch, give him swirlies. “You don’t need to worry about him. If he even looks at you funny, I’ll – ”

Tobias shook his head. “That’s not it. I’m not afraid of him at all. Especially not after all he’s been through. It’s just that, I look at him and I think to myself, how was I _ever_ afraid of him? How could I let some kid like him make my life hell? It’s like I’m looking back at the kid Miguel used to bully, and I can’t believe we’re the same person.”

Abineng looked down at Elhariel. “You’re still a storm-petrel, aren’t you? Still a little bird who can fly right through storms on the open ocean.”

“You _are_ the same person,” I said. I let my hair fall across my face, felt the smooth weight of it on my cheek and my mouth. “Listen to you, thinking about what he’s been through. You care more about that than how he bullied you. That’s the Tobias I saw even before the construction site. Always thinking so much about other people, what it’s like inside their heads.”

Tobias studied my face. His own cheeks flushed pink. “You always do that,” he blurted out.

“I do what?” Now _my_ face was heating up.

“That thing with your hair across your face,” Tobias said. “You always do that when you’re thinking about kissing me.”

 _Do I?_ I asked Abineng. I’d never noticed it.

_Yeah. You kind of do. And he would know, wouldn’t he?_

I flicked my hair out of my face, grabbed Tobias by the shoulders, and crushed our faces together.

Tobias kept his eyes open. So did I. His eyes were amazing this close, brown with flecks of inky dark. Tobias didn’t kiss like boys in the movies, grabbing the girl by the back of the head and molding her face to his. Instead, he melted into me and let me decide which way to lean, when to open my mouth, how fast and how much pressure. One of his hands drifted up my back to the nape of my neck, the other to the inside of my wrist. I gasped into his mouth. Both of those spots are really sensitive on my skin – it’s why I like cashmere scarves for my neck and a soft wrist support in front of my computer keyboard. It was like he knew my body from the inside – because, of course, he did.

I pulled out of the kiss, because I didn’t know where Elhariel was, and I wanted to see her. She was perched on Abi’s horn, reaching down to nuzzle and nip at his ear. I leaned my forehead against Tobias’s and giggled, because it was the only way to let out the feelings bubbling up from my chest.

“We should go,” Tobias whispered.

“Why? I like it here.”

“Because Ax just asked me in private thought-speak why our faces are so close, and whether I’m going to press my mouthparts to yours like the ‘restless youths’ do on TV.”

We sagged against each other, laughing ourselves sick. “Oh, God,” Abineng said. “Let’s _definitely_ get out of here.”

  


**VI. Melissa with Elgat Kar**

  


Another experience to process: last night I went to Elgat Kar’s new-free circle. Circles are what Hork-Bajir call a gathering for a special reason. Elgat invited all of us. But when I asked Julissa and Jamal if they were coming along, Julissa took Jamal’s hand and shook her head. “Nah. We got our own ways of dealing.”

I nodded and walked out into the evening cool, catching up with Robin and Miguel. There was a meeting rock where we were supposed to be. I’d already forgotten where it was, but Robin seemed to know the way.

There were ten Hork-Bajir sitting in a circle. Elgat Kar had her back to the meeting rock. “Welcome,” she said when she saw us, and made room for the three of us beside her. I sat cross-legged in the grass and breathed in the air. It was so fresh out here. Ververet landed on a dandelion by my knee and fanned his wings.

The Hork-Bajir went around the circle and introduced themselves. I didn’t remember anyone’s name. I don’t remember stuff like that very well, which is probably why I never did well in history class. Not that I have to take history class anymore. Then Elgat spread her arms and said, “See _hrala_. Watch _hrala_ flow. Join mind to _hrala_.”

I looked at Robin and Miguel, who shook their heads. I raised my hand and said, “Um. Excuse me. What’s _hrala_?”

Elgat and the other Hork-Bajir stared at me. I was starting to feel really awkward when one of the Hork-Bajir spoke to Elgat in their language. Elgat said, “Oh. Yes. Toby say human friends _hrala_ -blind.” She pointed to Nessarey with her intact hand. “Humans _hrala_ -blind. But humans half _hrala_.”

“You mean Rusakov particles,” Miguel’s dæmon said, looking down at her long lizard body. “What dæmons are made of. You can see it. What is it like?”

“We tell humans,” Elgat said. “Sing the _hrala_ to humans.” She started drumming on the ground with her hand and tail. The others took up the beat and added syncopations to it. She chanted in time with the beat, “ _Hrala_ flow down from the mountainside.”

The next Hork-Bajir to her right said, “ _Hrala_ make knots in trees up high.”

“ _Hrala_ in many shape at human’s side.”

So it went around. As I listened, Ververet whispered that maybe the beat told us as much about the _hrala_ as the chant-song did. The drumming sounded like the flow of a river. I imagined the _hrala_ as a waterfall pouring down the sides of the valley, making eddies and whirlpools all around us, a constant roar of water none of us humans could hear. I imagined it coming in and out of Ververet’s pores, becoming part of him.

The drumming faded, but I could still feel the beat pulsing in my chest. Elgat said, “Now we all see _hrala._ Know _hrala._ Humans too. Now we join circle, and learn how to be free.”


End file.
